A sense of place: Sikh identity in Great Britain and Hong Kong
Although evidence points to Sikhs being present on the day that Hong Kong became a British territory, Sikhs in Hong Kong remain a relatively unexamined group. Based on data gathered as part of a wider study of processes of religious transmission among young British Sikhs and on fieldwork carried out among the Sikh community in Hong Kong, this article follows Dusenbery's (2008) studies of Sikhs around the world to focus on a) how Sikhs understand their place in their social world and b) how they respond to being a minority in every country in which they are resident. Examining the literature on Hong Kong Sikhs in relation to their status and position within wider Hong Kong society, I compare the contexts, issues and challenges faced by Sikhs in Hong Kong with those in Great Britain. The article demonstrates that although many Sikhs have links to the Punjab, local context and local imaginings impact on religious identity and citizenship.
Belonging to a global family of God in Hong Kong: the relevance of religion in facing an uncertain future
In descriptions of their religion, Hong Kong Catholics tend to emphasize the perceived universal character of the Catholic Church. In this report I explore this emphasis by analyzing what this characteristic means for my informants. I argue that the universality of Catholicism gives Hong Kong Catholics meaning in the world in which they live. As residents of the Hong Kong SAR and citizens of the PRC, “Hongkongers” are faced with an uncertain future. In this uncertain situation, they search for a stable anchor. The universal Catholic Church offers them this, by giving them a sense of belonging to a global family of God. This report thus presents a different understanding of what it means to be a Hong Kong resident in today’s world.
Struggles for Visibility
This article addresses the ways in which terrorists are rendered visible in the news media. By studying images used in coverage of terrorists, the article focuses on the visual construction of this figure, which symbolizes the public’s notion of the “enemy”, in terms of specific attacks and the general threat thereof as well as terrorist actors, networks, and ideologies. The article takes its point of departure in the assumption that two visual forms are prevalent for representing terrorists in the news media, “surveillance representations” and “self-representations”. Based on this assumption, the article is guided by a principal research question, namely: How are terrorists made visible in the news media through surveillance representations and self-representations and what are the prevalent genres for visually representing terrorist actors? The article draws on a theoretical framework concerning the news media’s propensity to personalize the terrorist and the mediated visibility of terrorists. Empirically, the article is based on a quantitative content analysis of coverage of terrorism by Danish public service broadcasters DR and TV2 in 2016 to provide an overview of the proportions between surveillance representations and self-representations and develop a typology of the most widespread genres: ID photography, surveillance footage, selfies and similar, and private snapshots.