| Abstract |
This lecture discusses Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement between February 2019 and June 2020. In order to resist the threat of being extradited to mainland courts of the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong’s citizens mounted a city-wide insurgency that lasted over one year. Although the protest activities were brutally suppressed by the COVID-19 pandemic and national security legislation, the aspirations for democracy continued to resonate among Hong Kong’s diaspora communities across the world. This lecture is based on a chapter of my recently published book, Be Water: Collective Improvisation in Hong Kong’s Anti-Extradition Protests. I apply the research method of protest event analysis to trace the rise and decline of protest actions. In particular, I look at how new actions are invented and adopte,d and the spatial logic of diffusion. Contrary to the existing literature that glorifies the leaderless movements, the Hong Kong case indicates that its mobilizing capacity is finite and vulnerable to all-out regime repression. |