Movement Meaning of Money: Monetary Mobilization in Hong Kong’s Prodemocracy Movement

The resource mobilization (RM) theory has long discovered the significance of
money for protests; yet can this insight be applied to nowadays decentralized
movements, characterized by the absence of organizational leadership and more
creative and spontaneous participation from below? While the RM perspective is
anchored on a political economy of organizational fundraising, it is time to bring in
Viviana Zelizer’s economic sociology to understand how participants utilize the role
of donors, consumers, savers, and investors for the movement purpose. Focusing on
Hong Kong’s prodemocracy movement, this article theorizes the full panoply of
“monetary mobilization” to revise RM’s narrow conception. By offering a safer and
anonymous channel of expression, monetary mobilization emerges as a substitute to
in-person participation for risk-averse citizens with financial means. Money is always
loaded with symbolic meanings and ethical considerations so that it also functions as
a vehicle of the moral outrage and utopian aspirations. Participants are keen to
establish a proper relationship between sponsors and beneficiaries by exercising
diligent oversight to prevent its corruption. Contrary to the instrumentalist conception,
money is per se not a fully fungible and all-purpose resource.