Between consciousness and conscience: on ‘restorative commoning’ among moderate youth

This paper turns to the question of youth social mobilization within the context of the culture war that has produced polarized views of youth’s life worlds and capacities. In the discussion of youth engagement to pursue social change, attention is often drawn to the more ‘radical’ youth who engage in the spectacular and militant forms of protest. Little is understood about the less sensational forms of participation among more moderate youth, or their strategic repertoires of action in conception and in practice. Building on a contextual cultural political analysis of youth engagement for social change in Hong Kong over the past fifteen years or so, and incorporating a critical analysis of ethnographic semi-structured interviews of youth participants in a civic leadership challenge programme in 2023, this study attempts to delineate the underlying discursive conditions of possibility that generate a particular form of youth-based ‘care commons.’ It is argued that this care commons is being formed by the moderate youth’s engagements in local and transnational causes and leadership challenges and that such engagements take place along a trajectory that moves from a general liberal consciousness to a discourse of conscience ‘awakening.’ Thus, the study traces and connects the rise of a change-maker consciousness/desire among youth with the rise among them of a moral conscience for a sense of redemption. Further, it is proposed that this connection enables a practice of care by way of ‘restorative commoning,’ which contains collective practices of care holding the shared meanings of recovery, healing, and social stabilization through inclusiveness. Examining this trajectory of mobilization from consciousness to conscience, it is argued, will help us gain a better understanding of the predicament of the moderate political identity of youth. Copyright © 2024 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.