When protests and daily life converge: The spaces and people of Hong Kong’s anti-extradition movement

Abstract

Social scientists are prone to define social movements as something extraordinary, existing outside the mundane world of daily routines and lives. However, as the anti-extradition movement in Hong Kong has illustrated, protest and daily routines often overlap. This is due in part to the decentralisation of protest events geographically and the mobilisation of conventional life spaces and cultural repertoires as protest tactics. When protests become daily events and daily events become protests, ordinary people can no longer maintain ‘neutrality’ by claiming that they are just ‘distant spectators’. They are turned into witnesses of history, forced to make a moral judgment and take a stand. The situation also creates new roles for those not directly involved in the movement to participate in the movement. At the same time, this ‘invasion’ of the ordinary and the local by the harbingers of political conflict, has bred fear and white terror among neighbours in local communities.