Dissertation Project
Temporal Meaning of Money
My dissertation investigates how Hong Kongers, both in the city and across the diaspora, use money as a symbolic, emotional, and relational tool to navigate the aftermath of the 2019 protests. Drawing on over 170 in-depth interviews, 180 event observations, and digital content analysis conducted in Hong Kong and Canada, the study offers a transnational perspective on how political aspirations and belongings unfold and evolve in unexpected ways.
Connective Resource Mobilization:
Rethinking Movement Continuity Through Money in Transnational Activism for Hong Kong Democracy
Accepted
Pamela P Tsui
Social movement studies have long centered social movement organizations (SMOs) as the primary vehicles of mobilization. Yet contemporary movements are increasingly decentralized and digitally mediated, challenging SMO-centric frameworks such as resource mobilization theory (RMT). As contention becomes more individualized and non-conventional, organization- and event-centered approaches struggle to explain how movements persist, evolve, or dissolve under shifting conditions. Drawing on economic sociology, this article advances a relational resource mobilization framework through four propositions: resource mobilization (1) is historically contingent; (2) translates into tactics differently across organizational configurations; (3) is relational; and (4) provides an analytic for examining movement continuity across time and space. Within this framework, the model of connective resource mobilization is introduced to theorize how digitally mediated movements generate strategic capacity through personalized earmarking practices across borders and phases of contention. Based on 179 interviews and observation at 187 events in Hong Kong and Canada, the article traces how the Hong Kong Pro-Democracy Movement evolved from its 2019 protest peak through its subsequent downturn across domestic and diasporic contexts. By re-centering money, the article offers conceptual tools for analyzing divergent trajectories of movement continuity across historical, geographic, political, and socio-technological contexts.