Abstract
Tension has been rapidly rising in the past decade between the expanding religious fundamentalist forces in Hong Kong and glocalized movements of sexual rights. Normative institutions including faith-based organizations and megachurches, often joining hands with government bureaucracies, have adopted activist strategies to act in unprecedented unison, and with great speed, triggering waves of moral panic in their umbrella campaigns against sexual minorities and representations including but not limited to pornography, sex workers' and Tongzhi movements. In response to the leftist discourse of moral panic, Christian fundamentalist groups in Hong Kong have coined the alleged liberal critique of morality as "freedom panic" in order to preempt and rationalize their own fears and moralistic stances. "At this moment, we really need not produce 'freedom panic' and should not seek to demoralize Hong Kong society. Rather, we should reaffirm the significant role of morality in our free society, and continue to work hard to find a balance between the two poles" (Hong Kong Sex Culture Society newsletter January 2009). This paper seeks to map the development of cultural discourses within the post-1997 Hong Kong Christian fundamentalist movement. It traces how this movement has learned and modified the lingo of the US Christian Right while it has worked to localize its discourses, restabilize their stronghold and perpetuate their privileges by carefully picking its enemies and reinventing/manipulating the fears of its constituents. Through this analysis, it investigates the movement's complex strategies in blurring the lines between the personal and the political, between politics and religion, and between morality and spirituality.
| Original language | English |
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| Publication status | Published - 17 Jun 2010 |
| Event | 8th Crossroads in Cultural Studies Conference - Lingnan University, Tuen Mun, Hong Kong Duration: 17 Jun 2010 → 21 Jun 2010 http://cultstud.org/xr2010/crossroad/index.html (Event link) |
Conference
| Conference | 8th Crossroads in Cultural Studies Conference |
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| Country/Territory | Hong Kong |
| City | Tuen Mun |
| Period | 17/06/10 → 21/06/10 |
| Other | The 8th Crossroads in Cultural Studies Conference will be held in Hong Kong during June 17 – 21, 2010. Hosted by Lingnan University and organized by its Department of Cultural Studies and Kwan Fong Cultural Research and Development Programme, this is the first Crossroads Conference to be held in East Asia. Started in 1996 in Tampere, Finland, the Crossroads Conferences were to fill what was felt to be a gap in the international cultural studies community. Since then it had become one of the most important international conferences in cultural studies where scholars from all five continents get together to exchange their scholarly insights as well as to get in touch with different cultures. Organized by the Association for Cultural Studies (ACS), Crossroads conference is now held every two years in different parts of the world: Birmingham in UK, Illinois in US, Istanbul in Turkey and Kingston in Jamaica. |
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