Diffusion, Polyphony, and Diversity

Abstract

This forum explicates Hong Kong's complex religious and ritual landscape and the ways in which it influences social movements and identity making, in response to large forces of religion and protest around the world today, including in Ukraine and places in Asia such as Iran and Myanmar. Scholars have noted how various forms of Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, and popular Chinese religions have been diffused into the secular spaces of Hong Kong's governing state structures, formal and informal economies, and ad hoc protest organizations in civil society. Recent work has also emphasized the ways that race, ethnicity, and gender have been shaped not only by institutions with religious ties but also by theological and cosmological narratives that circulate through the public sphere. Religiosity in the Hong Kong protests might also be conceived as polyphonic, layering over familial practices with structures that have colonial baggage and postcolonial aspirations. Religion, in such senses, tends to be unbound by secular attempts to fence it into private spheres; it might be seen as forging a new civil society and civil identity through recent protests and shaping new theoretical frameworks.