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School food has recently become the focus of many international governments' efforts to address ‘the obesity epidemic’ among children and young people. The chapter attends to the issue of school meals by addressing the ways in which the management of the school site in the UK and the emergent spatial practices within and around school communities have been implicated in the delivery of school food policy objectives, specifically those that aim to produce young people as healthy subjects. It suggests that the management of the school site and its immediate environs have been integral to the way in which school food policy has been enacted at the local level. Drawing on notions of territoriality the chapter discusses the kinds of spatialised strategies and techniques that are deployed in relation to the ‘school boundary’ and the ways in which this boundary is policed to ensure the effectiveness of school meals policy. The chapter focuses in particular on the consequences for those that transgress the school boundary, both the physically and symbolically, with an analysis of the press reaction to the ‘junk food mums’ during a parent/school standoff that became known as ‘The Battle of Rawmarsh’.

This essay depicts the beginning of the Spanish Empire in the Asia-Pacific in the mid-sixteenth century (Ming dynasty), when Spaniard Miguel de Legazpi from Mexico in the Americas colonized the Philippines and established Manila as an extension of Spain’s American colony of New Spain. Sustaining this trans-Pacific relationship for 250 year was the Manila Galleon Trade between Acapulco, Mexico and Manila, trading American silver for Chinese silk, porcelain and other fine goods. The large community (twenty to thirty thousand) of Hokkien-speaking migrants from South Fujian (Minnan) which quickly arose and confined to ethnic neighbourhood outside the Manila city wall, became indispensable to the galleon trade by transporting from China all the luxury goods for the galleons, while resident artisans and labourers provided all the everyday consumer items, food, and services to the small Spanish population in Manila city. This first American “Chinatown” was the first large and permanent overseas Chinese community of Southeast Asia/Nanyang, which launched the worldwide Chinese diasporic movement that continues to this day, stretching all over the Americas, Europe and Africa.

For Arendt, the fragile balance between labour, work and action that lies at the heart of the human condition was fundamentally endangered by the planned obsolescence characteristic of the new post-war consumer capitalism. Artworks displaying a ‘junk’ aesthetic produced on the East and West Coasts of the United States in the period between 1957 and 1962 can be read in light of Arendt’s perspective, which intersected with both sociological critiques of the new capitalism and the writings of Zen master D.T. Suzuki and other popularisers of Zen Buddhism. Jack Kerouac’s 1958 novel The Dharma Bums resonated with both critiques of consumer society and newly discovered Zen alternatives. This chapter outlines some of the links between Kerouac’s Beat aesthetic and the assemblage and happenings of the early 1960s, by analysing the reception of landmark exhibitions such as The Art of Assemblage in 1961, and the practices of Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenburg, Bruce Conner and Allan Kaprow.

In this dialogue, the architect, professor of architecture and former head of department of architecture at MIT, Yung Ho Chang, outlines why he agrees with Mies Van der Rohe that materiality is the basis of architecture. He also reflects on why a new material is not necessarily a better one, and why an old one is not necessarily interesting simply because it is old. He explains the reasons why digital space is not a substitute for architectural space. He then goes on to explain that the way we ask ourselves about how the past and present are connected could be a way for us to discover what architecture really is, as well as discussing the process by which architectural intervention may or may not transform a place, or even make a new one.

This chapter examines the Description of the Keying and compares its structure with western ships. It proves that the descriptive and graphical evidence we have of the junk is significantly short in precision and detail. Not only is the vessel’s age uncertain, so too are its construction and conformity. Because all the artists’ renderings are much affected by ignorance and prejudice, and because no accurate measurements and drawings were ever made, evaluating the dimensions available needs care.

It would seem as though the Keying was a junk built broadly on the lines of a vessel familiar in the nanyang and coastal trades of late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century China. The exact design provenance is uncertain, but the vessel shows many of the broad lineaments of a fuchuan, albeit one which had acquired either from the outset of more probably as a result of post-build modifications and repairs, some Guangdong characteristics.

This chapter examines how fast the Keying could go by comparing her with the sea clipper Thermopylae. The comparison shows that although Junks like the Keying were not designed to go fast or be sailed flat out; their shipboard organization and operation did not aim to make them do so, they turned in a solid performance, perhaps only a knot slower than a comparable Western vessel. The Keying was not ideally crewed, but in almost 300 days of sailing in a variety of weathers, it steadily averaged 3 knots, kept its crew dry and proved itself and excellent seaboat.

This chapter explores the reasons that the Keying remained ignored. The Keying sailed to the west in a time when famous voyages were conducted and when museums were being built to house achievements and data from great maritime explorations. The long traditions of other cultures were not considered as anything worth studying closely, and the Keying was categorized as just the foreign and exotic. One result of this neglect is that museums in the present day have no concrete data to build models by. By bringing the Keying back to the limelight, the author hopes to stimulate the interest in a little known Chinese maritime past and the world of experiences that it encompassed.

The Keying was undertaken by a group of Hong Kong investors. Their aim was to sail the junk from Hong Kong to London, where it would be put on public display, along with the collection of Chinese artefacts that it carried, and earn the investors a handsome return. This was possibly an attempt to cash in on enthusiasm in London for‘things Chinese’, fomented by Nathan Dunn’s exhibition. Yet the Keying enterprise serve as a commentary on the backward culture of China, and the junk itself demonstrate the peculiarities of Chinese naval architecture. In the mid-1840s, part of the British public perceived the First Opium War as a disgrace, the Keying enterprise could be seen as an attempt to‘redress’ this perception.

The name of the junk might have brought out the differences in perception of the Chinese and the British, and laid the first seeds of dissension. Before becoming the Keying, the Junk could have had another name. No record showed that the British owners had considered the sensibilities of the Chinese crew when they renamed the junk. The name Keying also embodied the divide in fundamental ways in seeing things. The British saw Qiying as the symbol of improvement in post-First Opium War Sino-British relations, but the mandarin was much less popular with the Cantonese.

This chapter brings out the clash of maritime cultures on the Keying, and the difficulties caused. The Captain Kellett practiced a more regimented and hierarchical system while the Chinese crewman were used to a more collegial and relaxed trading junk tradition. The organizational structure of the Keying was also ambiguous, on the one hand, there were the European officers, on the other, there was a Chinese captain So Yin Sang Hsi, whose role onboard remained unclear. Furthermore, the Keying was in fact carrying two Chinese crews, one that came with the Junk when Kellet purchased it and another recruited by the Chinese captain. Although Kellett would have relied on So’s experience in sailing the junk, the different crewing systems and ways of exercising authority inevitably led to the confrontation in New York.

Twenty six of the Chinese crew arrested the Keying about a month after the junk arrived in New York. They claimed that they had been only engaged for eight months, but had stayed on for nearly a year. They also reported that they wanted their wages as well as their return passages paid to them as per their agreements as they have not been paid. The court case revealed the gulf between the European officers idea of their agreement and the crew’s. The crew would have been signed on using the Asiatic Articles that were not yet fully formalized but already differed in important respects from standard British articles, however that might not have been apparent to Kellett. In 1847, the New York Court ruled in the Chinese crew’s favour.

The Keying arrived in Boston in November 1847 after all dues were paid to the twenty six Chinese crewmen. For the three months that the Keying was in Boston, almost nothing could be said about it, if it attracted any attention during those times, this attention was fleeting. Perhaps it was the increasing financial distress, Kellett took the risk to sail from Boston to Britain in the worst of winter. February is one of the coldest months and gales are 20 to 30 percent more frequent than in March or April. During the repairing of the rudder, the second mate was drowned while overseeing work, but on 11th March 1848, the Keying reached the British Channel Islands. The chapter also explained the performance of the Keying by comparing it with other vessels.

The Keying was put on display initially at Blackwall. Later, in 1850, it moved up to the Strand, perhaps in order to have better access to its intended audience. The move up the Thames itself was remarkable, however, the silence of the newspapers showed that the feat attracted little attention. For the first year, the Keying was a star attraction, royalty and celebrities, such as Charles Dickens all visited it. However, its attraction didn’t last. In July 1851, because of the troubles caused by the crew, a judge warned that if the Keying wouldn’t leave the Strand, they would be indicted, so the junk returned to Blackwall. Charles Kellett had ceased to remain as the captain of the Keying after the junk arrived in Britain and became a business partner, earning enough to live ashore. He Sing, the mandarin, was promoted to captain and became, in a way, the representative of China.

The chapter details the events that happened during the last few years of the Keying’s lifetime. Between 1852 and 1855, the Keying was put on the auction block in rapid succession. Throughout these years, there have been attempts at making the Keying an attraction to the paying public, however, they all ended in failure. During these auctions, the Keying and its contents went to separate buyers. The Chinese junk was dismantled in 1854, only very few items in the collection survived. Charles Kellett moved to New Zealand in order to continue his career as a seaman. Very little was known about the Chinese crew, according to recollections of William Blakeney, some of them made their way back to China.

There are very few accurate records and paintings of the Keying. This lack of information revealed that there were fundamental problems of seeing vessels from another culture. The measurements, description and illustrations that survived were not reliable, the features of the junk in the portraits did not make naval sense. Out of all the illustrations, Nathaniel Currier’s and a Chinese gouche painting gave a clearer idea of what the Keying was like. The Chinese painting was painted according to the Description and not from life, and carried some exaggeration, yet, it showed the layout of the deck and the mixed crew.

Chapter two, entitled ‘Poetry of Science, Dombey and Son and The Difference Within’ considers how Dickens’s ‘Review’ establishes a number of paradigms to which Dickens will return throughout his life. The chapter also explores Dickens’s passion for adventure narratives and their influence on his racial thinking in a further return to Dombey and Son. The chapter reads the problematic portrayal of racial difference embodied by the native and as articulated by Susan Nipper as evidence of the widespread engagement with racial difference, a discourse which knits together the fabric of the narrative. The chapter explores the arrival of the Chinese Junk and the shows of London as evidence of the diversity present within. The Review: The Expedition to the River Niger provides another forum where Dickens can articulate unease with the imperial endeavour.

The final chapter analyses Robinson’s multiple award winning Mars trilogy. It considers cybernetic themes in conceptions of terraforming and biospheres, and synthesises two related concepts, Jed Rasula’s “composting” and Thierry Bardini’s “junk,” to characterise the ramified dialogism of terraforming narratives. It explores pastoral images of the garden and, through Simon Hailwood, brings to bear Nagel’s notion of intersubjectivity and the process of “stepping back” to account for the change of perspective toward the natural world experienced by various characters. This section continues with a discussion of the relationship between science and nature and its implications for environmental philosophy and science fiction before ending with reflections on how terraforming narratives combine myth, science, politics, social inquiry and aesthetics to explore human relationships to their environments.