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over HK$4 million to do a Territory-wide survey of historical buildings almost a year ago, work has yet to start partly because they are unable to line up enough qualified people to lead the survey (the Heritage Museum will be flying in scholars to help with its exhibitions - one a Canadian anthropologist who has been doing work in Hong Kong on and off since the 1960s, and the other an English design historian who returned to teach in the UK four years ago).
There are simply not enough bodies! The same 10 historians or so are burdened with research projects; advising the museums and AMO, advising radio and television programmes, exhibitions, even film; being interviewed by local and international newspapers; adjudicating photo competitions and students' projects; designing teaching materials for secondary schools; besides doing a full-time job of teaching and administration! Although a number of postgraduate students have written on Hong Kong history for their degree, many became secondary school teachers, civil servants, joined the private sectors, even the museum system as administrators, rather than pursue a career in research.
The problem is, unlike England for example, there is no army of amateur local historians (or local history societies) who study their own parish, church, village, street... as a hobby. In Hong Kong, local history is much more a consumer item than a participatory item. Despite the increased participation in projects by school and university students in the last decade or so, there is little sustained effort after the project is completed, few taking the initiative to continue research as a hobby. Thus, the main burden still falls upon those few scholars, every one of whom is spread desperately thin. There is a yawning gap, and what is missing is what we might call 'middle management' - budding scholars who can take on a project independently, without the supervision of a more senior scholar.
One worries also that the glamour of the marketplace might lure scholars away from serious scholarship. Why bother with painstaking collection and analysis of materials, criticism of text and interpretation of data when all one has to do is tell a good story to sell books? How does one strike a balance between pursuing serious research, which is almost by definition esoteric and exclusive, and serving the public?
There is another minor problem: items for research are now becoming much more difficult to come by. One effect of the growing popularity of...
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over IIK$4 million to do a Territory-wide survey of historical buildings almost a year ago, work has yet to start partly because they are unable to line up enough qualified people to lead the survey (the Heritage Museum will be flying in scholars to help with its exhibitions - one a Canadian anthropologist who has been doing work in Hong Kong on and off since the 1960s, and the other an English design historian who returned to teach in the UK four years agos).
There are simply not enough bodies! The same 10 historians or so are burdened with research projects; advising the museums and AMO, advising radio and television programmes, exhibitions, even film; being interviewed by local and international newspapers; adjudicating photo competitions and students' projects; designing teaching materials for secondary schools; besides doing a full time job of teaching and administration! Although a number of postgraduate students have written on Hong Kong history for their degree, many became secondary school teachers, civil servants, joined the private sectors, even the museum system as administrators, rather than pursue a career in research.
The problem is, unlike England for example, there is no army of amateur local historians (or local history societies) who study their own parish, church, village, street...as a hobby, In Hong Kong, local history is much more a consumer item than an participatory item. Despite the increased participation in projects by school and university students in the last decade or so, there is little sustained effort after the project is completed, few taking the initiative to continue research as a hobby. Thus, the main burden still falls upon those few scholars, everyone of whom is spread desperately thin. There is a yawning gap, and what is missing is what we might call 'middle management' - budding scholars who can take on a project independently, without the supervision of a more senior scholar.
One worries also that the glamour of the market place might lure scholars away from serious scholarship. Why bother with painstaking collection and analysis of materials, criticism of text and interpretation of data when all one has to do is tell a good story to sell books? How does one strike a balance between pursuing serious research, which is almost by definition esoteric and exclusive, and serving the public?
There is another minor problem: items for research are now becoming much more difficult to come by. One effect of the growing popularity of
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