Abstract
This research explores political consumption as a form to continue networked movements by engaging with eateries. Following social gathering restrictions imposed due to the pandemic and the National Security Law’s introduction, an organised protest is next to impossible. People who support the pro-democracy cause have sought subtle alternative ways of continuing their political activism, one of which is contributing to the “Yellow Economic Circle” (YEC). In its essence, the businesses are colour-coded – proponents frequent “yellow shops” which supported the 2019 anti-ELAB protests; boycott “blue shops” and “red/black” shops, the former Hong Kong Police Force backers and the latter China-affiliated enterprises. Established by grassroots efforts, the initiative started as restaurant and café guides – the businesses are meticulously screened and information is disseminated through social media platforms and mobile applications that are familiar to the general public. While it is a new way of re-discovering cities, the network of eateries has become a utopia and an infrastructure of political safe space, the two lenses through which this paper seeks to examine the YEC.
The concept of utopia can be used as discourse and sets of practices to look at social movements. People aspire to use consumption as a tool to change society, creating utopias through political ideals. The paper studies the characteristics that construct the utopia of YEC. Often, these criteria in the screening process decide the inclusion of certain businesses in the YEC, the formation allows us to understand the collective identity through these spaces.
The notion of infrastructure can be defined as a built network “that facilitates the flow of goods, people, or ideas and allows for their exchange over space” (Larkin 2013). Digital media has played an indispensable role in marking the spatial presence of the YEC, especially in providing a support system for small independent shops. This paper scrutinizes the modus operandi of YEC and its businesses to reveal how this social collective directly contributes to the political cause in a larger scope, such as the resistance against homogeneity in cities that are comprised of chain stores and big enterprises and urban regeneration through the introduction of a new cultural landscape. Yet, the network of political safe spaces functioning as hubs for intellectual exchanges akin to coffeehouses and cafés seems to be an underdeveloped prospect in the YEC. The few exceptions in Sham Shui Po and Foo Tak Building are cited as case studies to cogitate the potential of facilitating the actual evolving discourse of the political movement.
The YEC is a dérive – a psychogeographic tool for cities, the duo of lenses enables us to speculate the future of this system – does it have the means to sustain the political cause or is it a mere display of a nostalgic exoticised aspiration of Hong Kong?