Dong-Li Hong

Atmosphere as a means of governing life: weather modification and ecological conservation in Sanjiangyuan, China

Dong-Li is a DPhil student whose current research interests focus on environmental governance, biopolitics, and atmospheres. Prior to joining Oxford, Dong-Li worked at the Department of Geography, National Taiwan University where he conducted researches on environmental governance. Dong-Li holds an MSc in Building and Planning and a BS in Geography from National Taiwan University. His Master thesis examines the co-evolving of communication technologies and the urbanisms in Taiwan. His undergraduate dissertation investigates the economic geography of Taiwanese textile companies in the global production network, and how they interact with the institutional environment.

Awards and Funding

• China Times Young Scholar Award (2018), China Times Cultural Foundation
• Government scholarship to study abroad (2018-19), Ministry of Education, Taiwan

His doctoral thesis explores the biopolitics of weather modification and how atmospheres becomes a means of governing life. This work empirically focuses on a weather modification project which aims at ecological conservation at the Sanjiangyuan region in Qinghai, China. He aims to identify the various means through which the atmospheres come to be the subject of human modification, and how these humanised atmospheres come to shape the lived experience of a range of human and nonhuman actors as the science and practise of weather modification takes place. This research aims to connect current literature on environmental modes of biopolitics, with work in non-representational theory on atmospheres and affect, and to develop the idea of 'atmospheric biopolitics/governance.' This research has the potential to contribute to current concerns about climate change and the advent of the Anthropocene, and how those discourses are being mobilised to legitimate large scale plans for geoengineering.

Journal Articles

• Hong, D.L., Chien, S. and Liao, Y.K. (2020) Green developmentalism and trade-offs between natural preservation and environmental exploitation in China. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 3(3).
• Chien, S. and Hong, D.L. (2018) River leaders in China: Party-state hierarchy and transboundary governance. Political Geography, 62: 58-67.
• Chien, S.S., Hong, D.L. and Lin, P.H. (2017) Ideological and volume politics behind cloud water resource governance – Weather modification in China. Geoforum, 85: 225-233.
• Hong, D.L. (2015) Cross-border Interactions in Non-reciprocal Preferential Trade Agreements: AGOA Lobbying of Nien-Hsing. Journal of Geographical Science, 77: 83-105.
• Hong, D.L. (2014) The failure and regulation of urban infrastructure governance: a case of municipal Wi-Fi network in Taipei. Journal of Cyber Culture and Information Society, 27: 1-29.

Book Chapters

• Hong, D.L. and Chien, S. (2018) Summoning wind for urban cooling: urban wind corridor projects in China. In, Cheshmehzangi, A. and Butters, C. (eds.) Designing Cooler Cities: Energy, Cooling and Urban Form in Asia. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 137-150.
• Chien, S., Chen, L.C. and Hong, D.L. (2017) Newly Industrializing Economies (NIEs). In, Richardson, D., Castree, N., Goodchild, M.F., Kobayashi, A., Weidong, L. and Marston, R.A. (eds.) International Encyclopedia of Geography: People, the Earth, Environment and Technology.
• Chien, S., Hong, D.L. and Wu, Y.L. (2014) Central-Local Land Dynamics in Harborfront Transformation: Case Study of Kaohsiung, Taiwan. In, Aveline-Dubach, N., Jou, S.C. and Hsiao, H.H.M. (eds.) Globalization and New Intra-Urban Dynamics in Asian Cities. National Taiwan University Press, Taipei. pp. 125-154.