Agnes Shuk Mei Ku

Hegemonic construction, negotiation and displacement The struggle over right of abode in Hong Kong

This article analyses the cultural and political dynamics which unfolded during the recent right of abode issue in Hong Kong in terms of the processes of hegemonic construction, negotiation and displacement. On the one hand, there took place a process of hegemonic production of consent through the construction of social panic, as co-orchestrated by the state and the media. On the other hand, there emerged an opposition alliance which supported the common goal of constitutional right of abode via a varied political agenda. Despite the deep-rooted conflict between the two sides, the dominant and opposition discourses appropriated and negotiated with each other’s terms in their arguments surrounding issues of law and order. As legal discourses became predominant, the moral rights claim to family reunion within the movement became further and further displaced. As a result, the government was able to win over popular consent for its rather coercive and exclusionary action, even in the face of opposition and protest.

Boundary Politics in the Public Sphere: Openness, Secrecy, and Leak

The issue of openness/secrecy has not received adequate attention in current discussion on the public sphere. Drawing on ideas in critical theory, political sociology, and cultural sociology this article explores the cultural and political dynamics involved in the public sphere in modern society vis-à-vis the practice of open/secret politics by the state. It argues that the media, due to their publicist quality, are situated at the interface between publicity and secrecy, which thereby allows for struggles over the boundary of state openness/secrecy in the public sphere. A theory of boundary politics is introduced that is contextualized in the relationship among state forms, the means of making power visible/invisible (media strategies), and symbolic as well as discursive practices in the public sphere. In explaining the dynamics of boundary politics over openness/secrecy, three ideal-types of boundary creation are conceptualized: open politics secrecy and leak. The theory is illustrated with a case study of the Patten controversy in Hong Kong.

Revisiting the Notion of “Public” in Habermas's Theory—Toward a Theory of Politics of Public Credibility

There exist around the notion of the public three different yet overlapping dichotomies posed on different levels of analysis: public (sphere) versus private (sphere), public versus mass, and publicness versus privacy/secrecy. Habermass book ([1962]1989) incorporates all the three sets of dichotomy without resolving the contradictory meanings and bridging the gaps among them. As a result, his conception of the public sphere becomes paradoxical in terms, and it undertheorizes the cultural property of publicness. This article proposes an alternative conception of the public that may encompass the structural, institutional, and cultural levels of theorization in a more precise and coherent way. It is argued that the public is an imagined category about citizen membership that is attached to both institutions of state and civil society. In political practices, a symbolic “public” is institutionalized through an open communicative space where it is called upon, constructed, and contested as the central source of cultural references. In this connection, a notion of public credibility is introduced as an attempt to bring forth a richer and more dynamic conception about the role of culture in democratic struggles than that of critical rationality by Habermas.

Making Heritage in Hong Kong: A Case Study of the Central Police Station Compound

This article is a case study of state–society–capital conflicts over the preservation of the Central Police Station (CPS) compound in Hong Kong during 2003–08. The conflict was between two fundamentally different approaches to urban space: a cultural economy approach that took culture and space as a source of economic profit, and an opposition discourse of preservation that emphasized cultural, historical and humanistic values as an end. The struggle turned out to be a moderate success for anti-commercialism. Drawing on and extending the notions of collective memory and spatial politics, this article examines how the various civil society actors, in their struggle against commercialism, sought to define and enhance the cultural value of the site through a variety of discourses and practices relating to history and space. It addresses the specific question of why and how certain constructions of collective memory succeed (or fail) to work with certain places in particular instances. The study shows that memories of the CPS compound contained both state-associated and people-associated accounts, between which the former prevailed. The state-associated account was embedded in a familiar, hegemonic story about Hong Kong, which, via an abstract process of symbolization around the notion of the rule of law, successfully turned the compound into an iconic symbol of identification for the city. Beyond this, the civil society actors sought also to generate a sense of lived space associated with the people, and the outcome was mixed.

Constructing and Contesting the ‘Order’ Imagery in Media Discourse: Implications for Civil Society in Hong Kong

This article examines the role of the mass media in the discursive field of civil society in Hong Kong with reference to three case studies. The civil space is defined and redefined through the interplay between a dominant discourse of order versus chaos on the one hand and an opposition discourse of civil society on the other, the latter being mixed with certain ideological, pragmatic and marketing considerations by the mass media.This article examines the role of the mass media in the discursive field of civil society in Hong Kong with reference to three case studies. The civil space is defined and redefined through the interplay between a dominant discourse of order versus chaos on the one hand and an opposition discourse of civil society on the other, the latter being mixed with certain ideological, pragmatic and marketing considerations by the mass media.

Negotiating the Space of Civil Autonomy in Hong Kong: Power, Discourses and Dramaturgical Representations

This article delineates the negotiated space of civil autonomy in post-handover Hong Kong through the contingent interplay of law, discourse, dramaturgy and politics. It takes the Public Order Ordinance dispute in 2000 as the first major test case of civil conflicts in the shadow of the right of abode struggle. As it unfolded, the event demonstrated both the power and limits of resistance by the people, and the governments increasing will, as well as the strategies it used, to rule within the “law and order” framework under continual challenges. In the event, civil autonomy had been a contested issue involving considerations of rule of law, rights, civic propriety, state legitimacy and the construction of particular identity (such as student-hood). Given the multiplicity of discourses and sub-discourses, citizenship practices and public criticisms opened up a contested space for resistance and negotiation. A campaign of civil disobedience was at first successfully mounted through an ensemble of political and symbolic mechanisms. A turning point was configured when, mediated by a meaning reconstruction process, the government made a series of political and performative acts to re-script the drama, which turned out to be an ironic success for itself that put state–society relations on an increasingly tenuous course. Ultimately ideological differences were at stake: respect for a rights-based discourse of rule of law versus the assertion of political and legal authoritarianism.

The changing support strategies of Chinese families in the midst of rapid social and economic transitions

Families in China have been relying heavily on their own family networks for support during times of adversity. However, the rapid social and economic changes brought about by the introduction of the “open-door economic policy” have drastically changed the pattern of support strategies adopted by Chinese families in the PRC. The support resources provided by traditional family networks are becoming increasingly inadequate in supporting Chinese families to cope with changing environmental demands. In order to minimise risks and maximise opportunities for survival amidst rapid social and economic transitions, diversification of family support strategies is therefore necessary. This paper draws from the findings of a qualitative research conducted in Beijing on 17 Chinese couples to illustrate the inadequacies of the “family network support strategy”, and the strength of the more “proactive support strategy” in coping with changing environmental demands.

Ghetto at the Center of the World: Chungking Mansions, Hong Kong

directed against African immigrants, it is therefore inadequate (pace David Matsinhe and Norbert Elias) to conceptualize antiblackness just as manner, habitus, and ‘‘ghost’’ transferring from yesterday’s white oppressors to today’s black citizens. It is, incidentally, the same intellectual mood that banalized the critique of institutionalized racism in the United States and Europe into purely moralistic deprecations of ‘‘evil’’ and ‘‘hate.’’ In South Africa as elsewhere a complex and multidimensional definition of xenophobic antiblackness is needed, which leaves space to studying structural, even ontological, conditions without being for this reason mechanical or deterministic. Apartheid Vertigo’s usefulness to the task remains, despite its copious information and often sharp insights, limited.