Freedom as ethical practices: on the possibility of freedom through freeganism and freecycling in Hong Kong

Abstract

Although the idea of freedom has been well studied as an ideal in political philosophy, relatively little scholarship has focused on the human experience of freedom. Drawing on ethnographic research between 2012 and 2013, I examine how freedom was achieved by people who practice freeganism and freecycling in Hong Kong. I show that the freedom that these people pursue, either individually or collectively, is not a freedom without constraints but a freedom that must be attained through the exercise of deliberation, restraint, and self-discipline. While freegans seek liberation by withdrawing from the world and practicing self-cultivation (chushi asceticism), freecyclers do so by engaging with worldly affairs in order to create social changes (rushi asceticism). In both cases, by reimagining freedom as ethical practices rather than a right that comes naturally with birth, freegans and freecyclers in Hong Kong are able to experience moments of freedom despite inevitable structural constraints.

Keywords:

• Hong Kong
• freedom
• freeganism
• freecycle
• anti-consumption

Notes

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the editors and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 All Chinese words in this article are Cantonese romanizations except the words freedom (ziyou), rushi, and chushi as they are likely to be the search terms for scholars researching freedom and/or ethical practices in China. For ease of access, the romanization of these three terms are in standard Mandarin Pinyin. Cantonese romanizations follow the Jyutping system.

2 “Freedom” was listed as the number one core value in a press declaration signed by over 300 professionals and academics in 2004. More recently, a telephone survey conducted by the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2015 found that 88% of respondents agreed that “freedom” was one of the core values of Hong Kong society. See Communication and Public Relations Office (2015).

3 See Reporters Without Borders (2017).

4 In September 2017, a widely publicized workshop entitled “Hong Kong and Liberty” was held at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

5 See Chow (2015).

6 Berlin’s “Two Concepts of Liberty” was originally delivered as a lecture in Oxford in 1958. It was subsequently published in Four Essays on Liberty (Berlin 1969).

7 Political philosophers have debated the difference between liberty and freedom at both the conceptual and semantic levels. While some philosophers, such as Berlin (1969) and Cranston (1954), maintain that the terms can be used interchangeably, others, such as Arendt (1990) and Pitkin (1988), insist that they are not the same. In this paper, I follow Isaiah Berlin and use freedom and liberty interchangeably.

8 Berlin (1969, 131) wrote: “I wish my life and decisions to depend on myself, not on external forces of whatever kind. I wish to be the instrument of my own, not of other men’s acts of will. I wish to be a subject, not an object…a doer—deciding, not being decided for; self-directed and not acted upon by external nature.…I wish, above all, to be conscious of myself as a thinking, willing, active being, bearing responsibility for my choices and able to explain them by references to my own ideas and purposes”.

9 Although Foucault’s earlier work on biopower and governmentality have given the impression that he denied the possibility of freedom, he rejected “the idea that power is a system of domination that controls everything and leaves no room for freedom” (Foucault 1997, 293). In his later years, he shifted his attention to the idea of ethical self-cultivation by analyzing the Late Antiquity practices of epimelesthai sautou (“to be concerned, to take care of oneself”) as “technologies of the self” (Foucault 1988).

10 With the exception of public figures like Brother Au and Qing, all individual names are pseudonyms.

11 The place name Pure Land of Yanliao is in Mandarin Pinyin because the base was set up in Taiwan.

12 When Brother Au goes to the toilet, he brings a small cup of water to clean himself afterwards. This practice has allegedly put some Hong Kong people off from visiting the Pure Land of Yanliao, as toilet paper is not allowed there.

13 It is important to understand that Brother Au is not advocating a return to a premodern way of living. As he said himself, his way of life should not be treated as a universal truth and he does not expect anyone to live like him in the twenty-first century. He said that all he wants to do is to send a message to the society that “happiness is not how much you have but how little you need” by setting a good example.

14 Most aspiring freegans whom I interviewed took their inspirations from Brother Au’s “simple living,” except for one informant (twenty-two-year-old Gok), who said he learned about freeganism through an American anarchist. More recently, the Taiwanese freegan Yang Zhonghan and his book Notes in Ruin: The Freedom of Freeganism 《空屋筆記：免費的自由》(2017) has gained attention in Hong Kong. However, during my fieldwork in 2012–2013, no one mentioned Yang to me.

15 The group uses the name “Oh Yes It’s Free” in English and has no Chinese name.

16 Most “green” mothers in Hong Kong perceive infant formula as an unhealthy manufactured food sold by unscrupulous businesses and recommend complete avoidance of infant formula. However, the exchange of breastmilk has also provoked controversy about safety and hygiene.

17 Occupy Central was part of the international occupation protest movement against social and economic inequality. It took place in Central Hong Kong between 2011 and 2012. Occupy Central should not be confused with the Occupy Central with Love and Peace (later known as the Umbrella Movement) in Hong Kong in 2014.

18 The quote was excerpted from a radio interview originally uploaded to Youtube, but it was later taken down due to copyright infringement. I am unable to provide the original source/URL here but I recalled that Qing has reiterated the collaboration story in her other media interviews as well, so it was a widely known fact.

19 Most of the items are large furniture, as wood recycling is currently unavailable in Hong Kong.

20 See Really Really Free Market: https://reallyreallyfreemarket.weebly.com/oh-yes-its-free.html [accessed 28 June 2018].

21 One of the major debates in the study of freecycling is whether the initiative can bring the community together and engender new forms of civic life. In their study of Freecycle.org users in the United States, Nelson, Rademacher, and Paek (2007, 152) found that freecycling does play a part in both offline and online civic participation. Likewise, Sari’s thesis shows that Freecycle.org “redefines the way citizenship is practiced” and pushes forward “individual interests into community participation” in daily life (Sari 2010, 2). In contrast, Aptekar is more doubtful of the promise of freecycling. Her research found that members of Freecycle.org are motivated to give so that they could declutter their homes in an environmentally friendly fashion and in a way that can “expiate guilt from overconsumption.” Altruism and solidarity only come second among the Freecycle.org members she studied (Aptekar 2016, 266).

22 The milestone document, first promulgated in 1948, declares that all human beings “are born free and equal in dignity and rights” (Article 1). They “shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want” (Preamble). See United Nations (1998).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Loretta Ieng Tak Lou

Loretta Ieng Tak Lou is a Lecturer and Macao Fellow in Social Sciences at the University of Macau. Her research interests lie in the areas of environment, well-being, social movements, morality and ethics in Greater China. She is currently on research leave in the Department of Anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).