Politics of smell: Constructing animal waste governmentality and good farming subjectivities in colonial Hong Kong

Kin Wing (Ray) Chan

doi:10.1177/2399654420914320

Abstract

This paper examines the governmentality of colonial Hong Kong throughout the 1980s and 1990s, focusing on the implementation of the Livestock Waste Control Scheme (1987–1997), the production of normative waste treatment knowledge, the spatial control of farming practices and the resulting subjectivity in the construction of the ‘environmentally friendly farmer’ identity. These themes are examined by analysing archival materials and conducting in-depth interviews with two Pig Farmers Association representatives and 19 pig farmers. This paper argues that the colonial government of Hong Kong relied on environmental ordinances and zoning regulations, livestock waste demonstration projects and socially constructed perceptions of olfactory acceptability as major technologies of governance in the creation of ‘environmentally friendly’ pig farmers. Through being exposed to these technologies, pig farmers learned and internalised a particular concept of what constitutes appropriate animal waste management and treatment. This paper shows how the concept of being ‘environmentally friendly’ contributes to the creation and use of ‘good farming’ subjectivities when modernising pig farmers’ waste management practices.

Highlights

The aim of this paper is to examine the governmentality of colonial Hong Kong (HK) by focusing on the production of ‘environmentally friendly farmers’ through the Livestock Waste Control Scheme (LWCS)
This study contributes to the governmentality literatures in three major ways: (1) it provides a new angle from which to examine how animal waste governmentality produced environmental knowledge and technologies to transform farmers’ behaviours in a colonial context; (2) it demonstrates how the concept of ‘environmental friendliness’ contributes to the production of ‘good farming’ subjectivities, in the practices of waste management, odour reduction and daily monitoring of animal waste treatment facilities; (3) it considers smell within space and politics which brings a new empirical analysis of how farmers self-regulate their bodies’ scent and how pig odour impacts the perceptions of moral degeneracy in HK
Colonial power was exercised in pig farming spaces, using environmental ordinances, zoning regulations, livestock waste demonstration projects and socially constructed perceptions of olfactory acceptability as major governing technologies to produce ‘environmentally friendly’

Summary

Introduction

The aim of this paper is to examine the governmentality of colonial Hong Kong (HK) by focusing on the production of ‘environmentally friendly farmers’ through the Livestock Waste Control Scheme (LWCS) To pursue this analysis, this paper elucidates how the colonial government of HK (hereafter referred to as the ‘Colonial Government’) relied on environmental ordinances, zoning regulations, livestock waste treatment demonstration projects and socially constructed perceptions of personal odour as major governing technologies for the production of ‘environmentally friendly farmers’. During the outbreaks of animal–human transmitted diseases such as H1N1 and Avian Flu (Davis, 2006; Perdue and Swayne, 2005), pigs came to be perceived as the ‘hosts of pathogens’ which led governing institutions to develop a set of practices to increase biosecurity measures by separating ‘diseased pig bodies’ from ‘healthy human life’ (Hinchliffe et al, 2013)

Objectives

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Conclusion