Bodies, space, and democratic backsliding: Everyday sporting territoriality in Hong Kong

• In Event: Body Politics, State Power, and Resistance

Abstract

How are sports governed, disciplined, and mobilized through everyday sporting practices under democratic backsliding and tightening state control? Building on and moving beyond sociology of sport scholarship on elite and mega sporting events, this paper examines how state power operates upon and through bodies in non‑elite, non‑competitive sport in an increasingly authoritarian Hong Kong. Drawing on an ethnographic study of two non-elite, non-competitive sports groups with opposing political orientations (i.e., pro- and anti-regime), it examines how participants use sporting practices as forms of informal political engagement and personal development amid the context of democratic backsliding after 2019. Introducing the original theory of sporting territoriality, the paper explores how individuals and groups shape and transform social spaces (i.e., geographical, economic, representational, and ideological spaces) through sports. The findings provide broader relevance for other contexts of democratic backsliding and heightened polarization, where civil society actors turn to alternative, often informal, modes of political engagement.

Author

• Kylie Chiu Yee Lui, The University of Hong Kong