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Race, space and the regulation of prostitution in Colonial Hong Kong

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 January 2005

PHILIP HOWELL
PHILIP HOWELL
Affiliation:
Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3EN
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Abstract

The geography of the regulation of sex work in colonial Hong Kong is examined as a contribution to the historiography of the colonial city. Particular attention is paid to racial and sexual segregation and their relation to Foucauldian concepts of discipline and regulated sexuality. The introduction and revision of Venereal Disease Ordinances, and the landscape of regulated prostitution that resulted, are read as part of a mid-nineteenth-century crisis of government. Ultimately, the political and discursive construction of Chinese racial/cultural difference reveals the limits of ‘imperial governmentality’ as much as the ambition of colonial sexual discipline.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , August 2004 , pp. 229 - 248
Copyright
© 2004 Cambridge University Press

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