Abstract as per original application
(English/Chinese): |
Given the escalating effects of climate change, intense urbanisation and population growth, there is a rising concern about sustainable food provisioning. Amidst overlapping uncertainties and challenges, high-technological, vertical and controlled farming in the urban area is increasingly positioned as a future-proof, and local food source untethered by the climate.
High-technological farming often includes hydroponic or aquaponic practices, the use of LED light as sunlight, enclosed controlled growing environment and various automation measures. While these farming methods start to receive attention as a possible mode of climate adaptation, research surrounding the area in Hong Kong and around the world is still limited by an agrotechnological perspective. Framed in an interdisciplinary Environmental Humanities, this project brings the insights and approaches of the humanities into productive dialogue with agrotechnology and environmental science to examine this emerging and important farming landscape, with a specific focus on Hong Kong.
Situating Care in Sustainable High-technological Urban Farming will deploy interwoven qualitative methods, specifically site visits, interviews, focus groups and comprehensive textual analysis. Grounded in rich empirical materials, the project will draw on and refigure the concepts of critical care, future, and more-than-human to develop an innovative conceptual approach through a care-based approach—care ecology—to account for, assess, and intervene in the contested narratives and practices of care and future in the making of urban farming. The central questions that guide this project include: What are the issues and limitations of the current narratives of care and technocratic mode of futuring that are mobilised in some urban farming practices? What are the multifaceted futures and relations enacted through, or impeded by the current and emerging technological, controlled urban farming practices, and their multispecies consequences? How might approaching urban farming through a critical lens of care along with the additional temporal and more-than-human dimensions open up spaces for more sustainable technological mode of agri-food production?
The findings of the project will offer a critical social and cultural understanding of the subject that promises to enhance Hong Kong’s readiness for a wider seeding of urban farming practices and provide a solid basis for building towards sustainable food future. More broadly, the empirical and conceptual development will advance understandings in entangled human-environment-technology relations, serving as a test case for urban technological innovations in the time of climate crisis.
近年來，由於氣候變化的影響日益嚴峻，城市化發展急速，加上人口增長，可持續性的糧食供應成為引發熱議的關注點。面對各種不確定性和挑戰，高科技、垂直城巿農業被愈發視為一種未來可行且不受氣候影響的本地糧食來源。
高科技農業通常包括水耕或魚菜共生的種植方法、使用LED燈照取代陽光、封閉受控的生長環境和各種自動化措施。這些農業方法逐漸被視為一種適應氣候轉變的可能的模式，但相關研究在香港及其世界各地仍然局限於以農業科技的角度作探討。本研究項目以跨學科的環境人文學為框架——以人文學科的視野和方法與農業科技和環境科學進行具建設性的對話——來探討這一新興且重要的農業範疇，並且聚焦香港。
本項目將運用綜合的質性研究方法，例如實地考察、訪談、焦點小組和文獻綜述分析。本研究項目將以豐富且實質的研究材料為基礎，以關懷(critical care)、未來(future)， 和以非人類為中心 (more-than-human)的概念為參考和反思，發展以關懷為基礎的創新的概念性路徑——關懷生態學——來解釋、評估和介入城市農業建設之中有爭議性的關於關懷和未來的敘事和實踐。研究的核心問題包括：目前城市農業實踐中關於關懷和科技主義敍事所引向的未來有甚麼問題和限制？現行和新興的以科技控制的城市農業實踐將會實現，或障礙，哪些多重面向的未來和關係的發展？這些實踐又會引致哪些多物種的後果？通過批判性的關懷, 與及具時間性和以非人類為中心的思考維度來探討城市農業可如何開啟更多的空間，構想更可持續的農食生產的模式？
項目的研究成果將為相關的議題提供社會和文化理解。這有望提升香港推廣城市農業實踐的可行性，並為邁向可持續的未來糧食供應提供堅實的基礎。從更寬廣的角度來看，通過探索概念及實例，這個研究項目將提供一個於氣候危機時代城巿創新科技的案例，推進有關人類-環境-科技交錯複雜的關係的理解。
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