Frustration, Refusal, and Pleasure: Assemblage Analysis of a Kabaddi Project in Hong Kong

This article traces the evolution of a kabaddi project in Hong Kong, which began as a grassroots initiative to foster ethnic integration and intercultural education but later expanded into international competition. Drawing on self-narrated experiences of long-term participants, the study reveals how social projects often deviate from their original intentions – yet such deviations can generate equally meaningful outcomes. Employing a post-qualitative inquiry (PQI) framework, the analysis embraces material, affective, and non-human data while resisting normative assumptions. Through assemblage theory, the paper maps the rhizomatic linkages that shape athlete subjectivities and sport practices, highlighting how these connections traverse multiple orders of existence. The ethnographic cases demonstrate that while resistance stabilizes and maintains order within the kabaddi assemblage, refusal disrupts dominant structures and opens space for new relational possibilities. Ultimately, the study shows how embodied affects – frustration, refusal, and pleasure – can reconfigure sport assemblages and generate alternative futures in contexts shaped by postcolonial governance and transnational sport politics.