The umbrella movement: Ethnographic explorations of communal re-spatialization

Abstract

This article is an ethnographic exploration of the Umbrella Movement that occupied and re-spatialized the arterial streets of Hong Kong in late 2014. It examines how communities made up of hamlets of tent-dwelling demonstrators evolved, in particular, out of the Admiralty occupied area. Through a sense of communitas exercised among these communities, occupied areas were infused with ‘pure potentiality’ and transformed into liminoid spaces. As a result, the previously undifferentiated space of roads took on new meanings and was redefined to facilitate the discursive needs of these communities. Such transformation of space also reveals the tonality of life among the communities, and how they relate to each other through the moral idiom of care. While short-lived, the communal re-spatialization of the Umbrella Movement articulated images of a utopian Hong Kong as well as a critique of Hong Kong’s political plight, often through irony and humor.