Sunflowers and Umbrellas

“A fine and welcomed collection that sheds new lights on two iconic popular movements in contemporary Asia. Capturing the Sunflower and Umbrella Movements’ organization dynamics, expressive politics and political outcomes in granular details, this volume advances a much needed comparative agenda for social movement studies.” ~Ching Kwan Lee, University of California, Los Angeles

“The chapters in this volume illuminate two important new social movements by focusing on their cultural and symbolic dimensions. Expertly edited by two distinguished scholars of youth, intellectuals and political activism, this book makes an important contribution to the meaning of media and political culture in contemporary social movements.” ~Guobin Yang, University of Pennsylvania

“For such momentous events, there is not yet a commensurately substantial body of academic literature…. This volume therefore represents a valuable contribution, with a novel comparative perspective on both movements as ‘participative performances that mobilized cultural frames to act out new forms of civic identity and community deliberation’ (p. 14).  The editors promise a more granular approach to the dynamics and texture of each movement, an appreciation of the spatial dynamics whereby public spaces were reappropriated and reorganized, and the spectacular expressive dimensions manifest in artwork, artefacts and ephemera through which claims were articulated.” ~Jonathan Sullivan, University of Nottingham, in The China Quarterly, July 2021.(https://www.doi.org/10.1017/S030574102100062X)

"The book raises many stimulating questions about the future of grassroots political movements both in Taiwan, an island increasingly threatened by the People’s Liberation Army, and Hong Kong, where Xi Jinping since 2020 has imposed a more authoritarian 'new normal' on its political elite and civil society as a whole.... All in all, this book should be read by people interested in the social movements, new forms of political activism, and changing political cultures in the Chinese world." ~Jean-Pierre Cabestan, Hong Kong Baptist University, in The China Journal (Jan. 2022) 87:202 7204 (https://doi.org/10.1086/716983)

"The nuanced contributions in this excellent edited volume elucidate how movement participants enacted their democratic hopes, visions, and identities at critical times in the history of these societies.... What sets this book apart is its imaginative framework; the editors have done a great job at tying the various contributions together and situating them within the social movement literature." ~Leon N. Kunz, The University of Texas at Austin, in Pacific Affairs, vol. 95, no. 3 (Sep. 2022).