Grassroots nationalism: Changing identity in a changing context

China Review

Volumn 7, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 149-167

  Ma, Eric ^a  

^a CHINESE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG   (Hong Kong)

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EID: 36849042058     PISSN: 16802012     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (26)

1. From 2001 to 2003, our research team regularly visited factories, coffee shops and disco bars in south China. My research assistant served as a worker in a factory in Dongguan and a waiter in a bar in Shenzhen respectively for 3 months, while I worked more closely with the bosses of the factory and the bar. From these research sites we branched out to other social networks for interviews and participant observations. This research design enabled us to examine the cultural connections between Hong Kong and south China and how the lifestyles of rural migrant workers are drastically re-shaped by the rising work-and-spend culture in the area.
2. See Gordon Mathews, Eric Ma and Tai-lok Lui, Hong Kong, China, Learning to Belong to a Nation (London: Routledge, 2007).
3. Bernard Luk, "Hong Kong History and Hong Kong Culture," in Culture and Society in Hong Kong, edited by Elizabeth Sinn (Hong Kong: Centre of Asian Studies, 1995).
4. Eric Ma, Culture, Politics, and Television in Hong Kong (London: Routledge, 1999).
5. Of course, these researchers do allow the respondents to choose the option of "both local and Chinese" or "neither local nor Chinese." But the availability of such options has not changed the basic assumption underlying the survey questionnaire approach: being Chinese and being local are separate and discrete. Furthermore, the meanings of being Chinese and being local, which may change quite drastically in the course of socio-economic and political development, remain unchanged in different phases of the survey.
6. See Siu-kai Lau and Hsin-chi Kuan, The Ethos of the Hong Kong Chinese (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1988);
7. Siu-kai Lau, "Hongkongese or Chinese: Hong Kong Chinese's Identity," Twenty-first Century, No. 41 (1997), pp. 43-58;
8. Timothy Wong, "Ethnic Identity and National Identity of the Peole in Hong Kong: A Liberal Explanation," Occasional Paper No. 50 (1996), Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong.
9. Ernest Gellner, Nationalism (London: Weidenfeld and Nichlson, 1997);
10. David McCrone, The Sociology of Nationalism: Tomorrow's Ancestors (London: Routledge, 1998).
11. Joseph Man Chan (ed.), Reading July 1st (Hong Kong: Ming Pao Press, 2004).
12. Ming Pao editors, Debates on Patriotism (Hong Kong: Ming Pao Press 2004).
13. As of 14-16 July 2003. See the Hong Kong University public opinion website at http://hkupop.hku.hk/
14. See the public opinion website at http://hkupop.hku.hk/
15. See Paulantzas 2003 for a discussion of state, space, and nation.
16. Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism (London: Sage Publications, 1995).
17. See Neil Brenner, Bob Jessop, Martin Jones and Gordon MacLeod (eds.), State/Space: A Reader (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 2003).
18. In the mid-1990s, there were roughly 2 million visits made by mainland Chinese to Hong Kong and 3 million visits made by Hong Kong people to mainland China. The figures have increased to 6.8 and 5.6 million in 2002; in 2004, there were 12.2 million visits made by mainland Chinese and 60 million visits made by Hong Kong people to the mainland (partnerNet.hktb.com). As these figures reveal, travelling to China has become an everyday experience for many in Hong Kong today, as is shown, for example, by the massive crowds of Hong Kong shoppers to be found just over the border in Shenzen every weekend, in search of bargain prices.
19. Henri Lefebvre, "Space and the State," in Brenner et al. (eds.) (Note 14).
20. As of the time of writing, Hong Kong citizens need to file on foot past immigration controls upon leaving Hong Kong for China or upon re-entry. Only a limited number of ordinary people can drive their cars across the border.
21. Reginald Kwok and Alvin So (eds.), The Hong Kong-Guangdong Link: Partnership in Flux (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1995).
22. See Carolyn Cartier, Globalizing South China (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001);
23. Bohong Gong, Gongfu wenhua yuanli (The Cultural History of Guangdong) (Guangzhou: Guangdong Higher Education Press, 1999).
24. George C. S. Lin, Red Capitalism in South China (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1997).
25. This is the Mainland Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement, abbreviated as CEPA. See the Hong Kong Trade and Industry Department website: www.tid.gov.hk/english/cepa/fulltext.html
26. See Eric Ma and Anthony Fung, "Negotiating Local and National Identification," Asian Journal of Communication 17(2):172-185.