Sampson Wong

Bio

Sampson Wong is a Lecturer for the General Education Foundation Program at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His academic interests include contemporary urban studies, the production of space in Hong Kong, art, society and the public sphere, and community, neighborhood and crowd creations. Wong holds a BSSc from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, an MSc from University College London,  and a Ph.D. from The University of Manchester.

Full bio: https://www.oge.cuhk.edu.hk/index.php/en/overview/staff/dr-wong-yu-hin-sampson

Project Description

This paper will focus on the latest wave of protests demanding democratization in Hong Kong, which arguably started in June 2019 and dissipated after July 2020. The study analyzes how ‘making use of the urban fabrics’, the streets and open spaces in particular, was integral to how the protests evolved over time and how its repertoires were established.

While the ‘Hong Kong model’ and the ‘Be Water strategy’ in social movement are now often cited and celebrated, this paper argues that for anyone to make sense of the Hong Kong protests, it is important to make sense of their spatial specificities. Apart from providing an overview of the production of spaces of creative resistance during the protests, the paper will also discuss how the ‘spatial legacies’ of the protests were still visible in the post-movement urban environment.