Colours of Money, Shades of Pride: Historicities and Moral Politics in Industrial Conflicts in Hong Kong

In June 1986, a Japanese watch factory in Hong Kong tried to fire 36 of its women workers. This provoked an unprecedented sit-in by 300 of the women employed at the plant. The sit-in lasted for 13 days and accounted for over half the days lost to labour unrest that year. At the time Fred Chiu, an ex-prisoner of consciousness in Taiwan, was studying industrial conflicts in Hong Kong. Although an anthropologist, he became deeply and personally involved in the strike. In this account of those intense days, he ‘combines the art of the story-teller with the wizardry of the sophisticated social theorist’ to report the events and to interpret them in a style characterized by clarity, vigour and honesty.