Unfamiliar rhythms and the micro-politics of late-modernity: An ethnography of global Hong Kong

Abstract

This article explores connection or disjuncture between everyday life and global culture. Efforts to de-essentialise or pluralise urban globalisation have focused on local negotiations of discourse or the macro effects of the world city, here rhythmanalysis is used to bridge these approaches. The analysis develops on the tension between the theoretically-based multiplicity and reflexivity of late-modernity, and the structured reality that has been documented. The global city is stratified through spatial and dispositional-embodied qualities that dramatically truncate the possibility of encountering unfamiliarity through everyday life. These stratifications lean on each other and replicate as ‘small worlds’ of co-constitutive, comfortable spaces. To explore this, Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis is used to explicate participant accounts of going to a nightlife district in Hong Kong for the first time. For some, the district is present in daily life, contributing to a fluent connection and orthodox visitation. Meanwhile, subjects who visit under less seamless conditions reflexively feel out of place and corporally distinct. This article contributes to understanding the micro-politics of late-modernity, the very real, yet transparent, spatial and embodied barriers which truncate individual flourishing in late-modern societies.