“Without really thinking about it, we have come to assume that a flushing toilet is one of the basic requirements of an urban setting and one of the symbols of an advanced society.” argues Gonçalo Santos who also points out that “It is not clear that dumping excreta into any convenient body of water is the best way to handle local and global sanitation problems. We assume that flushing and forgetting rid us of the problem, when we have only compounded it by moving it to another place.”
In a talk co-presented by The Hong Kong Anthropological Society and The Hong Kong Museum of History and drawing on historical and anthropological research on the origins and the spread of the flush toilet globally, Gonçalo Santos talks about the rise of modern sewerage systems and their impact on society.
Do Flush Toilets Have Politics? Anthropocenic Reflections
When: 7pm, 15 January 2014
Where: Lecture Hall, G/F, Hong Kong Museum of History, 100 Chatham Road, Tsim Sha Tsui
How Much: Free
More info: the talk is in English, more from [email protected]