Academic literature on the topic 'Macanese culture'

Diaspora transformed the urban terrain of colonial societies, creating polyglot worlds out of neighborhoods, workplaces, recreational clubs and public spheres. It was within these spaces that communities reimagined and reshaped their public identities vis-à-vis emerging government policies and perceptions from other communities. Through a century of Macanese activities in British Hong Kong, this book explores how mixed-race diasporic communities survived within unequal, racialized and biased systems beyond the colonizer-colonized dichotomy. Originating from Portuguese Macau yet living outside

The colonial histories of mixed-race diasporic communities have often been linked to narratives of policy discrimination, strategic collaboration and collective resistance. Deviating from these themes, the experience of the Macanese diaspora in British Hong Kong offers us an opportunity to observe the constructions of race, class and culture as more nuanced than the colonizer–colonized polarity usually allows. Through the lenses of transimperial migration, identity contestation and cosmopolitanism and transnationalism, the collective biographies of middle-class Macanese individuals in this book combine to demonstrate the resilience of mixed-race diasporic communities in the face of normative reality and uncover the liberties they exercised on foreign soil in the search for wider opportunities, a better life, social status and power.

As the Second World War unfolded in Hong Kong, it created various crises that intensified pre-existing racial tensions in the colony. In exchange for the liberties and safety of being ‘neutral’ or third nationals, Anglicized Macanese rushed to revoke their British status in favor of Portuguese certificates. Some sought refuge in Macau, where they would live, perhaps for the first time ever, side-by-side with Macanese subjects who were different in terms of cultural and political orientation. Despite acquiring Portuguese status, three Anglophile Macanese—Eddie Gosano, Leo d’Almada e Castro and Clotilde Barretto—continued to work for the British government, risking their lives for the BAAG. The Epilogue ends with the aftermath of the war and a reappraisal of the resilience of identity.

The prevalence of profound deafness in the United Kingdom is reported as 9 per 10,000 in 3-year-olds to 16 per 10,000 in 9- to 16-year-olds, although it is estimated that these figures may be higher because of possible under-diagnosing (Fortnum et al. 2001). In England and Scotland, approximately 13 in 10,000 children have a permanent hearing impairment of 40 dB or more (moderate to profound) across the frequencies 500–4,000 Hz (Fortnum and Davis, 1997; Fortnum, 2003; Kennedy and McCann, 2008; MacAndie et al. 2003) and in 11 in 10,000 this loss is congenital. The remainder are acquired or progressive. Profound impairment (≥95 dB loss) occurs in 2.4 per 10,000. Bilateral sensorineural deafness had a prevalence of 21 per 10,000 in a Finnish birth cohort (1974–1987) (Vartiainen, Kemppinen, and Karjalainen 1997). A survey in the general population in Sichuan, China, found a prevalence of 1.9 per 1,000 profound deafness (Liu et al. 1993). Table 44.1 shows the World Health Organization (WHO) and British Society of Audiology definitions of degrees of deafness. Sensorineural deafness involves problems either in hair cell function in the cochlear or in the nerve transmission of sound. For bilateral sensorineural deafness, the diagnosis is made at variable ages in health systems in which there is no universal neonatal screening. This varies across cultures, but can still be surprisingly late even in modern health systems. One study of 106 children with bilateral sensorineural deafness showed a mean age for first diagnosis at 42 months (median 33 months) of age, with a range from 4 months to 11 years of age (Walch 2003). In another study in Glasgow, Scotland (Chaurasia and Geddes, 2008), only 50% of early childhood deafness presented before 2 years of age. Conductive deafness involves problems with sound travelling from the outer ear, through the middle ear, to the cochlear. The commonest cause is otitis media (“glue ear”), with losses usually in the mild to moderate range. About half of children between 2 and 4 years will have at least one episode of otitis media with effusion (OME) (Zielhuis, Rach, and Van den Brock 1990).