THESIS
2013
vii, 178 pages : illustrations ; 30 cm
Abstract
This thesis is an attempt to approach urban social movement in Hong Kong from a cultural-political
perspective. Taking the campaign to preserve Lee Tung Street in 2003 to 2007 as the
case study, it analyzes the cultural claims arising in the process of the struggle, which not only
aimed for material compensation and proper re-housing but sought to claim the democratic
management of the city. This study engages with McAdam’s political process model as the
theoretical framework and extends the model by examining the mediating role of cultural and
ideational processes in movement mobilization and movement development. More specifically, it
brings to light how the socio-economic context, the political opportunity structure, and collective
attribution come to play in the mediation p...[
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This thesis is an attempt to approach urban social movement in Hong Kong from a cultural-political
perspective. Taking the campaign to preserve Lee Tung Street in 2003 to 2007 as the
case study, it analyzes the cultural claims arising in the process of the struggle, which not only
aimed for material compensation and proper re-housing but sought to claim the democratic
management of the city. This study engages with McAdam’s political process model as the
theoretical framework and extends the model by examining the mediating role of cultural and
ideational processes in movement mobilization and movement development. More specifically, it
brings to light how the socio-economic context, the political opportunity structure, and collective
attribution come to play in the mediation processes. In the case study, it is found that, while the
ideational resources from the urban movements of the early-1990s had prefigured later struggle to
develop in certain direction, the full-fledged development of the new urban movement was a
result of the articulation of pre-existing movement ideas and the production of new meanings
through the participation of various actors in the aftermath of the July 1, 2003 Protest. To capture
the structural dimension of the counter-hegemonic challenges, this study highlights the changing
forms of free space in Wanchai that structured the articulation of cultural claims and facilitated a
popular participation from the civil society. These findings throw light on how the meanings of
urban (re)development have been shaped and reshaped and how the paradigm of urban social
movement in Hong Kong has been undergoing changes in recent decades.
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