Why does Community Matter? What are We Weaving?

A Dialogue between Hui Po Keung and Janis Jefferies

Fig. 1 Workshop view of Hey! Let’s WEAVE! / 2017 Courtesy of Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile

Introduction

W h y d o e s co m mu n i t y ma t t e r? Wh a t a r e w e w e a vi n g ? T h e se a re i m p o rt a n t s u b j e c ts for d i s c u ssi o n . T h e sym p o si u m c o n ve n e d b y CHAT, “TECHSTYLE Series 2.1: Fabpublic! − Talking about Textile, Community and Public Space” included several presentations from an international gathering of artists, textile makers, curators and museum specialists. The panel discussions that explored different aspects of how technology and craftspersonship could align closely in the process of community formation.

The significant question, however, is why does community matter? This will be addressed in a more detailed way in the dialogue that forms the basis of this essay. In order to answer the question “Why does community matter?” first of all, we have to rethink the question: “What is community?”

The dialogue that follows is an adaption of a transcript of an exchange between Hui Po Keung and Janis Jefferies, drawing on Hui’s panel comments and Jefferies’s initial paper prepared for the symposium.

Hui: Community can be talked about, perhaps in two different levels or in two different senses. First, it has to do with the defining feature of what could be defined as a community. Community is a connection between people, their relationships, or with a building or environment. But what kind of connection or relationship are we looking for, that could be regarded as a community relation? That perhaps could be talked about a little bit more, later. And for defining features we could also think about it through two different angles. For Iris Marion Young, a critical geographer and feminist, her view of communities is based on her concerns regarding the urban setting. Janis Jefferies has also talked about Richard Sennett’s work, which similarly concerns the city environment.

Jefferies: Young talks about the community of difference, supplementing our conventional

way of understanding the community of commonness. So, what are we addressing when we talk about why community matters? Are you, like Young, focusing on a community of commonness? Or we are talking about a community of differences? Perhaps that is one of the ways of thinking through what the defining feature of community is.

Hui: Yes, partly as the second way of talking about the definition of community could be a focus on the effect of community. A community of commonness is kind of like talking about inclusiveness; but a community of differences, is a way of, like, responding to the negative effect, or possible negative effect, of building up a community that has a tendency towards exclusion. I understood this from Young’s discussion on a sense of community that focuses on the tendency towards exclusion.

Jefferies: In her essay on community, Young describes the ideal of community as an “understandable dream” (1990: 300). The dream brings people together although she recognises that the politics of consensus and mutual recognition excludes as many people as it includes. In other words, the ideal of community endorses and values homogeneity. Young proposes a third alternative: the ideal of city life as the normative version of social relations.

By city life she refers to:

“A form of social relations which I define as the being together of strangers. In the city, persons and groups interact within spaces and institutions they all experience themselves as belonging to, but without those interactions dissolving into unity or commonness. City life is composed of clusters of people of affinities and families, social networks, voluntary associations, neighbourhood networks, a vast array of small communities.” (1990: 237)

Her ideal of city life is thus characterised by social differentiation without social exclusion, while still being full of variety. When you build a common community, you tend to exclude people who are different from the people who are included in that community. So how can we think through community in these two different dimensions?

Hui: Yes, this answers my first question. And after clarifying our understanding of what community is, the next question is, obviously, why does community matter? Why does weaving create a community? Why is weaving a particular social relationship that is important to us? In what sense is weaving important in this contemporary world? For whom? For what purpose?

Jefferies: I would like to turn to the work of Richard Sennett for a moment to underpin some ideas I explored in my paper.

In "Why does Community Matter – What are We Weaving?" I tried to link weaving with community building through what you suggested was an epistemological conceptualisation or understanding of how these two processes or elements can be brought together. For example, in The Uses of Disorder (1972), Sennett observes that the city alone can make us conscious of a kind of equilibrium of disorder; clear images are lost because every day one sees so many people who are alien − but who appear to be alien in the same way. The attempt to trace the history between humans

and the built environment, and the importance of the public domain in order that people should have direct involvement in terms of relating to public spaces, is part of a drive towards sustainable development and the role of cities in a civil society. Why then start with Sennett?

Partly because Sennett has mapped out what he has termed “the fall of public man” (also the title of his 1977 book), by which he means the demise of sociability, and how cities became places where strangers were likely to interact with one another, where anyone could speak to anyone else on public terms, without prying into a private life. Accordingly, individuals made themselves in public, but realised their natures in the private realm, particularly that of the home/family. The “death of public space” that occurred later in the 19th and 20th centuries, is linked by Sennett to increased secularism and industrial capitalism. Public space became a place of fear where one could accidentally let slip signs that pointed to his or her “true” nature or identity.

In the 21st century, the idea of cooperation and of redefining the public realm is put forward very powerfully by Richard Sennett in Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation (2012). He argues that cooperation needs more than good will: it is a craft that requires skill. In modern society traditional bonds are waning, and we must develop new forms of secular, civic ritual that make us more skillful in living together with others. One of the practical ways to do this, is to consider the notion of textiles, and more particularly weaving, as a social fabric, deeply embedded in the concept of “publicsin-the-making”, an extension of the sewing circle as “Do It Yourself” activism but with a grounded history of politics, justice and citizenship.

Hui: If I may add to Sennett’s work for a moment, I consider his project to be a critical reflection on capitalism in the contemporary context. He is pretty concerned about “the fall of public man” as you have mentioned earlier. And this “fall of public man” is also evidenced in the shrinking of public space. That shrinking of public space is also a concern to Sennett’s teacher, Hannah Arendt. Arendt discussed three major activities when she talked about the human condition. The first one is labour; the second one is work which is pretty much related to what we have been discussing this afternoon, i.e. craftsmanship, or a well designed process of human activities. But for her, the most important activity for human beings is action. Action, for Arendt, takes place when individuals have engaged in public dialogues and interactions, is something that is not designed, and the outcomes are uncertain. In this sense, building up a community through engaging in public action, could be regarded as a recovering of human nature. And therefore, we may ask the following question, how can we address the transformation of a contemporary society in which labour and work have increasingly become the predominant activities in contemporary urban settings? Especially when action, or public political activity, is declining. So how we reintroduce action back to projects that aim at social transformation becomes an important question. In other words, what’s the relevance of public political participation in the backdrop of what we have been dealing with, or in connection with all the projects that we have been talking about?

This may also connect to what you name as “publicsin-the-making”.

Jefferies: Yes, collective and cooperative acts of “publics-in-the-making” constitute performative action, which I interpret as offering gestures of resistance and of solidarity, transforming space into the potential for a shared, dynamic, communal social place, even if only for a moment, as in a number of artist residencies or action-building projects. “Publics-in-the-making”

is thereby put forward as: publics that gather because of a shared area of curiosity, rather than in a shared sense of emergency, and where issues are co-articulated in the making. I think this idea of shared curiosity is different to Young’s idea of a community of commonness as it does not presume existing social relations or shared values. These have to be made.

Let me further suggest that this call “for more intimate relations” within “publics-in-the-making”, reinforces for me the notion of textiles as social fabric, entangled and perhaps knotted, but also with the capacity to disentangle and innovate.

Textiles have always operated at the intersection of individual practice and collective, group activity. The public and interactive capabilities of Web 2.0 – blogs, web rings, social media – are being harnessed to create vibrant communities of textile makers that are at once: local, virtual, and international in scope – based on material production using traditional craft skills and yarns, as well as on the optical fibre and twisted pair cable used for telecommunications. It is global, yet rooted in the very specificities of the local.

I suggest that perhaps this is the impetus behind CHAT’s “Weave Wednesdays”, led by Him Lo, Community Engagement & Learning Program Curator, and also “Hey! Let’s WEAVE!” – both of which are part of CHAT’s on-going Community Engagement and Learning Programs, dedicated to reactivating the legacy of Hong Kong’s textile industry and to bridge communities and generations through participatory textile experiences (Figs. 1-2).

A series of hands-on textile, arts and heritage events is located at Fuk Loi Estate, in Tsuen Wan, once the hub of Hong Kong city’s textile industries, and also the neighbourhood of CHAT’s future home.

“Weaving on the street every Wednesday” are stories about community as told by those who used to work in the textile factories. I don’t think they have a common understanding with their public, which is why it’s quite useful to rethink what we mean by “the public”. This is why we include the public in the process of making; because in this making, the public emerges, just as at Tsuen Wan, those that had a sense of community in their settled neighbourhood and at the factory become interpreters of their own experience as they weave and tell stories within a different kind of public space and public engagement.

I am thinking that there may be a connection between thinking and acting – along with a kind of “logic of weaving”, and a more skillful way of living together with others, even if people think differently or don't know what they think at all.

So my final question would be: can the gathering of materials teach us something about human gathering?

Let me give an example. Based firmly within the language of empowerment and arts practice, there are many projects across the world enacted through what you may call public political participation. But I am referencing one which I know intimately, FRIENDLY ZONE / CABBAGE FIELD (“Draugiška zona / Kopūstų laukas”, 2007 ongoing) which is an area of 13,000 sq m in Šančiai on the outskirts of Kaunas in Lithuania. It was military territory from the mid-19th century up to 1993. As soon as the last Russian soldier left the soil of independent

Fig. 2 Workshop view of Hey! Let’s WEAVE! / 2017 Courtesy of Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile

Fig. 3 Cabbage Field 2017 - Balsamic Popular Spectacle / 2017 Courtesy of Vita Gelūnienė and Ed Carroll Photo credit: D. Petrulis

Lithuania, the area became a no man’s land – shabby, desolate and even dangerous to people trying to step in. A site-specific land reclamation project involving gardening and story-telling has been led here by Vita Gelūnienė and Ed Carroll who live within this neighbourhood (Figs. 3-5).

The name, CABBAGE FIELD, is derived from the three surviving 19th century military structures that were used by troops as pickled cabbage storage units. From the 19th century until Lithuania's independence times this place was used for military purposes. The CABBAGE FIELD is a parcel of land that became a site for small-scale land reclamation, where the main agent is not a developer or public body but rather an act of and by local people: working from the bottom-up to person-up, from the settlement of their community to other communities who come and participate. So there might be a “Cabbage Field” in your community too: a public parcel of land that is overlooked, dumped-upon, and where non-action is a tactic of preparation for its transfer from state asset to private benefit. The first task of reclamation is an act of imagination: what if our land could be a site for the agency of residents and for all the people in the neighbourhood to flourish? Cities need more than big intentions and exciting plans. Community needs to be strengthened and bottom-up community initiatives remain underdeveloped. Communities often love cultural projects because they can give expression to the invisible dimensions, the unheard voices and the many silent contradictions.

I think ideas of community culture are often overlooked and community resilience often viewed as an object of urban development. Significantly, CABBAGE FIELD proposes that the community should be thought of as subject with attendant power to feel and transform one’s self in relation to others, to renew and reframe places, institutions, and notions of work, as well as to shape and reshape the value base of the city, creating a different kind of public space.

Hui: Indeed, public action, as given in your example, is the defining feature of human beings, because we are born as social beings who need to interact with other people. In order to be human, one has to connect and interact with others. This interaction is not by plan and not controllable, it’s open-ended and with unanticipated outcomes. That is why we should always be attentive to the question, “why does community matter?” or “why does building up connections matter?” What kinds of social interaction or connection (i.e. community) are we talking about? Or more fundamentally, what is community? I think only by addressing these radical questions will we be able to better understand the main theme of this conference.

References

Arendt, Hannah. (1958) The Human Condition, 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sennett, Richard. (1971) The Uses of Disorder. London: Allen Lane The Penguin Press. Sennett, Richard. (2009) The Craftsman. London: Allen Lane The Penguin Press. Sennett, Richard. (2012) Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation. London: Allen Lane The Penguin Press. Young, Iris Marion. (1990) “City Life and Difference”, in Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Fig. 4 Friendly Zone #6. Cabbage Field, a site-specific land reclamation project / 2015 Courtesy of Vita Gelūnienė and Ed Carroll Photo credit: R. Ščerbauskas

Hui Po Keung Associate Professor, Lingnan University, Hong Kong

Hui Po Keung is Adjunct Associate Professor, Department of Cultural Studies, Lingnan University and co-founder of Mobile Co-learning, a local non-profit organisation aiming at facilitating co-learning outside formal schools in Hong Kong.

His main research interests are education and cultural studies, cultural economy, history of capitalism and markets, and alternative development. Having co-edited the 6 volumes of Cultural and Social Studies Translation Series (jointly published by Oxford University Press, Hong Kong, and Central Compilation & Translation Press, Beijing), he is also the author of Farewell Cynicism (Hong Kong Oxford University Press, 2009), and What Capitalism is Not (Hong Kong Oxford University Press, 2002 and Shanghai People's Publishing House, 2007).

Janis Jefferies

Professor, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK

Janis Jefferies is Emeritus Professor of Visual Arts, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK. She is an artist, writer and curator and Senior Research Fellow at the Constance Howard Resource and Research Centre in Textiles.

She has edited numerous books and chapter contributions on textiles, technology, performance and practice research and was one of the founding editors of Textile; The Journal of Cloth and Culture. She is coeditor of the Handbook of Textile Culture (2015), wrote the introduction to From Tapestry to Fiber Art. The Lausanne Biennials 1962-1995. Fondation Toms Pauli Lausanne and Skira Editions Milan (2017) and contributed “Ravelling and Unravelling: Myths of Europe, Texts, Textiles and Political Metaphors” in Weaving Culture in Europe was published by Nissos Publications in 2017 for Paphos, European City of Culture. With Professor Barbara Layne she is consultant on The Enchantment of Textile research project. Their work is supported by the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, the Social Science and Humanities Research Council, and The Milieux Institute at Concordia University.

Fig. 5 Friendly Zone #6. Cabbage Field, a site-specific land reclamation project / 2015 Courtesy of Vita Gelūnienė and Ed Carroll / Photo credit: R. Ščerbauskas

許寳強、珍妮絲•謝菲斯的對談

Fig. 1 過嚟織嘢！活動現場/ 2017 鳴謝：六廠紡織文化藝術館

引言

社區爲何重要？我們在編織甚麽？的確值得討論。六廠紡織文化藝術館舉辦「新經緯系列2.1： Fabpublic! — 關於紡織、社區和公共空間」研討會，邀請來自世界各地的藝術家、創作人、策展人、 博物館專家演説。是次座談會旨在從不同層面探索科技與工藝如何在社區形成的過程中緊密合作。

「社區爲何重要？」這個關鍵問題，在小組座談中討論透徹，並成為本文的基礎。然而我們在回答問 題之前，需要反思社區的定義。

本文以許寳強與謝菲斯對談的形式出現，内容摘錄了座談會上許寳強的評論，以及謝菲斯爲大會發表 的論文。

Fig. 2 過嚟織嘢！活動現場/ 2017 鳴謝：六廠紡織文化藝術館

許寶強：我們可以從兩個層面去討論社區。首先 是界定社區的特徵，是指連結人群、關係、建築 或環境。再問怎樣的連結才算得上社區關係呢？ 這一點容後再談。我們也可以從兩個角度去界定 社區的特徵。批判性地理學家兼女性主義者艾莉 斯•楊格（Iris Marion Young）對社區的看法， 是建基於她關注的都市環境；而謝菲斯早前提及 理查•森尼特（Richard Sennett）的學說，同樣 關注城市狀況。

謝菲斯：楊格提出的差異社區，補充了我們抱持 的共性社區傳統認知。所以當談論社區爲何重要 時，所指的社區到底是甚麽？是如楊格一樣著眼 於共性社區？抑或是差異社區？這或許是思考社 區特徵的方式之一。

許寶強：是的，某程度上社區效應可以看成另一 個界定社區特徵的角度。共性社區的特徵是包 容；據我看楊格論述的排他社區，差異社區的誕 生，似是回應社區經過排他而構成所產生或藏潛 的負面效應。

謝菲斯：楊格的社區論說形容理想社區為一個 「可理解的夢想」（1990: 300）。雖然這個夢 想可以將人們團結起來，但她也承認政治共識、 相互認同所排斥與包容的兩種人數不相伯仲。換 句話説，理想社區還是傾向和重視共同性。楊格 提出理想城市生活的第三種可能性，是規範化的 社會關係。她所指的城市生活是：

「我會將這種社會關係定義為陌生人共同生活。 在城市，個人和群體於他們所屬的空間和機構中 互動，這些互動卻不須融為統一或共同的特徵。 城市生活匯聚了親友圈子、社會團體網絡、志願 機構、鄰里網絡，由很多小社群組成。」（1990: 237）

因此，她理想中的城市生活具有多元化的社會差 異，卻並不排他。事實上當我們建立一個共同社 區時，往往傾向排斥異己，我們該如何從這兩個 方向思考社區呢？ 許寶強：是的，這正回應了我的第一個提問。釐 清了社區的定義後，接下來要處理的問題就是： 社區爲何重要？爲何要編織一個社區？爲甚麽編 織特定的社會關係對我們如此關鍵？對當代社會 有何重要之處？目的何在？或爲誰而建立？

謝菲斯：我想先引用森尼特的研究來支持我論文 探討的幾個概念。

「社區爲何重要？我們在編織甚麽？」我嘗試透 過你提出的知識論概念，或紡織關聯社區建立的 分析，而將這兩方面連結起來。舉例森尼特在 《The Uses of Disorder》（1972）書中，提出 城市本身就產生一種紊亂的平衡：我們每天遇到 許多陌生人—以同樣陌生的姿態出現，印象變得 模糊。努力追溯人類與建築環境之間的歷史，以 及提倡公共領域之重要性，好讓人們直接參與公 共空間及建築尤關的事情，以促進可持續發展， 亦是城市於公民社會扮演的角色。那爲甚麽要從 森尼特説起呢？

其中原因是森尼特透過其理論「再會吧！公共 人」（同名書籍出版於1977年），指出社交功 能的消亡殆盡，以及城市何以成爲陌生人彼此交 流的地方—任何人都可以和他人談論公共話題， 卻不牽涉私人生活方面。人們在公共領域中虛構 自己的形象，唯留待家庭等私人領域，才顯露真 性情。公共空間的消亡發生於十九及二十世紀， 森尼特將這歸究於世俗主義、工業資本主義的興 起。公共空間變成一個令人生懼的地方，因爲一 不小心就容易流露出本性和真實身份。

踏入二十一世紀，森尼特於《Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation》 （2012）提倡合作、重新定義公共領域這兩個 概念。他認爲合作需要技巧，徒有善意並不足 夠。現代社會中傳統約束日漸衰落，人們必須發 展出更有技巧地共處的公民日常之道。一個可行 的方法就是利用紡織或編織這個社會構成元素， 以「公眾共創」推行，算是婦女縫紉小組的延續， 卻涉及深厚的政治、公義、民權概念。

Fig. 3 友善區 / 椰菜田 6，一個在地土地開墾項目/ 2015 鳴謝：Vita Gelūnienė、Ed Carroll / 攝影：R. Ščerbauskas Fig. 4 椰菜田2017— / 2017 鳴謝：Vita Gelūnienė、Ed Carroll / 攝影：D. Petrulis

許寶強：容我對森尼特的理論補充一下。他的研究是 對當代社會資本主義的批判反思。正如你剛才所説， 他十分關注「再會吧！公共人」的問題。而當代公共 空間的萎縮正引證了這個現象，這亦是他的老師漢娜• 鄂蘭（Hannah Arendt）關注的議題。鄂蘭指出人的 狀況有三種主要活動：第一是「勞動」；第二是「工 作」，這一點與我們討論的内容有關，即工藝或精心 設計的人類活動。然而，於她而言，人類最重要的活 動是「行動」。當個人參與公眾對話和交流時，就形 成了行動。這個過程未經設計，結果也無法預料。從 這個角度看，透過公眾行動來建立一個社區是回返人 類的本性。問題是：究竟要怎樣處理當代社會轉型中， 「勞動」和「工作」逐漸成爲城市的主導活動，而另 一方面，行動或公眾政治活動卻正在消亡的現象？因 此如何令社會轉型為本的項目重新納入「行動」，就 變成重要的課題。然而究竟公衆參與政治，又與大家 一直進行或討論的項目有何關聯？

或許這與你所説的「公眾共創」亦相關。

謝菲斯：是的，「公眾共創」之集體協作，是想達成 願望，我認爲亦是表現堅韌及團結的行為。它有潛力 將空間變為頃間共享、活力的公共交際場所，常見於 一些藝術家駐留計劃或行動組織項目。因此，「公眾 共創」就是聚集有共同好奇心的人群，不因任何突發 事件，其間並共議話題。共同的好奇心不等同楊格所 説的共性社區，因爲沒有預設的社會關係或共同價值 觀，那些還有待建立。

讓我進一步解釋在「公眾共創」過程中，講求建立「更 親密關係」：這對我而言，紡織作爲社會構成元素變 得更有說服力，過程不僅令人們聯繫團結起來，還負 起梳理及創新的作用。 紡織總是在個人與群體之間進行。透過第二代互聯網 提供的公共和互動平台，如網誌、網絡環、社交媒體， 紡織家社群可同時活躍於本地、虛擬、國際層面。他 們既以傳統手藝與紗線等有形物料生產，也利用光纖、 雙絞線所組成的電訊科技；全球化的同時也植根於本 土特色。

我認爲這正是六廠紡織文化藝術館「織織星期三」活 動，以及社區及共學部策展人盧樂謙背後的推動力。 「過嚟織嘢！」系列是CHAT六廠持續進行的社區共 學計劃，旨在活化香港紡織工業的歷史，並透過參與 紡織活動的經驗，將來自不同社區和年齡的人連結起 來（Figs. 1-2）。

荃灣福來邨遂展開了一系列紡織、藝術和歷史相關的 體驗活動。該區曾是香港紡織工業的重鎮，也是未來 CHAT六廠的所在地。

CHAT六廠隊伍通過「織織星期三」活動，與曾為紡 織工人的坊眾分享社區的故事。我相信大家對公眾還 沒有一個共同的認知，有必要重新思考「公眾」的定 義。這正是我們進行公眾共創活動的原因，因爲公衆 會在活動過程中逐漸成形。正如荃灣的居民對居住或 工作的社區有歸屬感，就會到別的公共空間和活動一 面編織一面細訴故事。

即使人們有不同的想法，甚至不知道自己的想法，我 認爲以「編織的邏輯」思考及行動，與技巧地共同生 活是有一定關係的。

所以我最後想問：聚集物料能否啓發我們如何聚集人 群？

我試舉例。在增權自強和藝術創作的理念方面， 世界上有很多項目正推行公眾政治參與。就以 我熟悉的「友善區 / 椰菜田」項目（2007年起 建立）為例，地點設在立陶宛 Kaunas 外圍一個 叫 Sanciai 的地方，佔地13000平方米。從十九 世紀中葉至1993年爲止，這塊地都是屬於軍事 禁區。隨著立陶宛獨立，俄羅斯軍隊撤出立陶宛 國境，該地也被遺棄，變成一個荒涼破敗、甚至 危險的地方。鄰近居住的 Vita Geluniene、Ed Carroll 就地組織起一個結合園藝和分享故事的 開墾計劃（Figs. 3-4）。

「椰菜田」這個名字來自三幢十九世紀的軍事建 築。在俄軍駐扎的時候，這裏曾是軍隊存放酸椰 菜的倉庫。直到立陶宛獨立以前，一直是軍事用 地。「椰菜田」並不是由公共機構或發展商主 導，而是當地居民把荒地變為小型開墾農地的計 劃：這是一個由下而上，從個人出發的行動，從 當地社區開始，到吸引外來群體一同參與。我們 身邊可能也有這樣的「椰菜田」：一塊被忽略荒 廢的公共用地。坐視不理只會助長商人將這些國 有資產變成私人的牟利工具。所以開墾計劃的第 一步就是想像：如果我們的土地可以成爲一個讓 所有人都蓬勃發展的工具將會怎樣呢？城市需要 的不只是遠大的目標和宏大的計劃。社區力量需 要增强，民衆自發的行動卻遠遠落後。社區需要 文化，是因爲文化能表現出隱沒的層面、忽略的 聲音、無聲的矛盾。

我覺得社區文化這概念經常被忽略，而社區凝聚 力則被視爲城市發展的附屬品。「椰菜田」反映 出社區也可以反客為主，藉著感應和改變人們之 間關係的能力，重塑一個地方、機構、工作，建 立和塑造城市的價值，以及創造出一個獨特的公 共空間。

許寶強：從你的例子中可見，公衆行爲的確可以 幫我們定義人類。因爲我們生來就有與他人交際 的需要，生活正是與他人互動和聯繫。而這些互 動並非可以規劃或控制，而是自由開放的，結果 自然也無法預測。這就是爲何總要問「社區爲何 重要？」，或爲甚麽要建立人與人之間的連結？ 我們所談論的又是何種社交和聯繫（如：社區）？ 甚至是更核心的問題，甚麽是社區？我認爲必須 解答這些最根本的問題，才能深入了解這次研討 會的主題。 參考資料：

Arendt, Hannah. (1958) The Human Condition, 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sennett, Richard. (1971) The Uses of Disorder. London: Allen Lane The Penguin Press. Sennett, Richard. (2009) The Craftsman. London: Allen Lane The Penguin Press. Sennett, Richard. (2012) Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation. London: Allen Lane The Penguin Press. Young, Iris Marion. (1990) “City Life and Difference”, in Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

許寶強 香港嶺南大學副教授

許寶強，嶺南大學文化研究系兼任副教授、流動民 主教室聯席創辦人。他的研究興趣包括文化經濟 學、教育與文化研究、社區經濟、發展研究、資本 主義和市場史。著有《資本主義不是什麼》（香港： 牛津大學出版社，2002年）、《富裕中的貧乏— 香港文化經濟評論》（香港：進一步出版社，2003 年）；合編「社會/文化譯叢」共六本（香港：牛 津大學出版社；北京：中央編譯出版社）；學術 論文散見《臺灣社會研究》、《Cultural Studies Review》、《Inter-Asia Cultural Studies》等學 報。

珍妮絲．謝菲斯 英國倫敦金匠學院教授

珍妮絲．謝菲斯，藝術家、作家及策展人。她是倫 敦大學金匠學院視覺藝術系榮譽教授，同時也是康 斯坦斯霍華德紡織品資源與研究中心高級研究員。

作 為《Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture》的創立編輯之一，她編寫了許多與紡 織、技術、表演和實踐研究有關的書籍和文章。 她 合 編 了《Handbook of Textile Culture》 （2015）， 並 撰 寫《From tapestry to fiber art : the Lausanne Biennials, 1962-1995》 的 前 言（Fondation Toms Pauli Lausanne 、 Skira Editions Milan, 2017）；「Ravelling and Unravelling: Myths of Europe, Texts, Textiles and Political Metaphors」載於為歐洲文化之城 帕福斯所出版的《Weaving Culture in Europe》 （Nissos Publications, 2017） 之 中。 她 與 Barbara Layne教授出任《The Enchantment of Textile》研究顧問，獲加拿大創新基金會、社會科 學與人文研究委員會、康考迪亞大學Milieux研究 所的支持。