Airborne Schizophrenia: On the Dual
Identity of Air Pollution in China
Time: 1:00 – 2:30 pm, 11 Mar 2016 (Friday)
Venue: Room 401, Humanities Building, New Asia College, CUHK
Speaker: Edwin Schmitt (PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong)
Edwin Schmitt, our PhD
candidate, gave a seminar on “Airborne Schizophrenia: On the Dual Identity of
Air Pollution in China” on 11 March. In the seminar, Schmitt shared with the
audience his ethnographic research on the perceptions and understandings of air
pollution in Chengdu, and discussed why Chinese society has stressed the
importance of smog but not the problem of climate change.
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| Edwin Schmitt |
Schmitt first talked
about ecological civilization in China and the Chinese government’s stance of balancing
economic development and environmental integrity. He shared his research
findings of the media coverage in China, from which he traced the international
and domestic political discourse on climate change and smog. Taking a page printed by People’s Daily as an example, Schmitt explained how the Chinese media arranged its content to balance the reports on climate change with APEC
announcements related to economic development. He also highlighted the myriad
sources of smog information, such as from social media and official websites of
monitoring stations, that are accessible to the general public.
Schmitt collaborated
with two local NGOs and the Neighborhood Management Office in Chengdu to
conduct a survey about Ecological Housing Estate Projects. He interviewed 41
individuals and asked them to do free listing on four topics, and air quality
had been mentioned in all four. He also surveyed the environmental perceptions
of 245 households, and found out that their concern for air quality
was second only to food safety. In addition, he asked people to define in their
own words what ecological civilization was, and a considerable proportion of
respondents reported that they didn’t know. Schmitt then discovered that those
who did not know about Ecological Civilization perceived air quality to be
significantly less important to their life when compared with those who did
know about the ideology. This finding revealed the important influence of
ideology over the way people perceive the environment. As Schmitt mentioned,
social class also had a role to play in people’s perception of air quality, in
which the upper classes exhibited a significantly higher concern for air
quality than those from the lower classes.
Apart from the state
discourse that had been disseminated through the media, Schmitt, citing Fei’s
differential mode of association, pointed out that the importance of family in
China contributes to the duality of the “farness” of climate change and the “nearness”
of smog. This duality might prevent the public from asking systematic questions
and finding solutions to the problems of air pollution. To break down the
duality, an older frame could mesh with a new mode of scientific thought that
brings issues of climate change and smog together. However, Schmitt also highlighted
that we cannot assume that bringing these issues together would be an
apolitical process. Solutions to air pollution must consider the way that
different social groups perceive the problem and realize that not everyone
would be in favor of the breaking down of the duality that Schmitt highlighted
in this talk.
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| The audience |
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