Politics of Incivility in Post-Colonial Hong Kong

• In Event: 545 - Section on Sociology of Culture Roundtable Session.
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 08. Culture and Politics

Abstract

There is a turn to the ‘politics of incivility’ after 1997 with the symptoms of decline of public authority, and a demotic or even populist trend in political culture. This paper argues that the pragmatic political explanations, focusing primarily on the nature of political system and the discrepancy between Hong Kong people’s democratic aspiration and pace of political reform and so on, common among scholars observing Hong Kong politics, are largely insufficient for comprehending the undercurrents of political tension and even chaos of the post-colonial Hong Kong. The uncivil turn of Hong Kong politics will be rendered sociologically as not only the failure to establish a legitimate political order in Hong Kong since the 1997 handover as a postcolonial society that underwent a decolonization without nation-state building, it but reveals, more fundamentally, the return of the repressed societal problem of order and solidarity of a refugee society.
(Keywords: Politic of incivility, post-colonial Hong Kong, decolonization, problem of social order)

Author

• Siu Han Chan, United International College, Hong Kong