Unmasking Hybridity in Popular Performance

This paper explores cultural hybridization in popular music and the eroticization of the exotic eastern aesthetic. Using musicology and anthropology as tools, the paper examines varying perspectives of the artists, audience and marginalized groups. Although cultural appropriation has been used recently as a blanket buzzword in mainstream dialogue, it does provide a platform to discuss complex issues on gender, race and sexuality that has been muddled by colonial mentalities

The Postcolonial Reality of Using the Term " Liturgical " to Describe Hindu Dance

Homi Bhabha, a postcolonial scholar influenced by the work of Franz Fanon and Edward Said, indicates that identities stimulate a need to negotiate in spaces that result in the remaking of boundaries. There is a call to expose the limitations of the East and the West in an effort to acknowledge the space in-between that interconnects the past traditions and history, with the present and the future. This study applies Homi Bhabha’s theory of hybridity to determine whether the term liturgical is appropriate to describe Kuchipudi Indian classical Hindu dance. Presented are the elements of Kuchipudi dance and liturgical dance, and then contemplative dance is discussed as an appropriate medium in the space of hybridity between Kuchipudi dance and liturgical dance

Economic and political hybridity: Patrimonial capitalism in the post-Soviet sphere

AbstractHybridity in non-democratic states can be economic as well as political. Economic hybridity is produced by the same kind of pressures that create political hybridity, but the relationship between economic and political hybridity has not been as much studied by political scientists. This article uses the concept of patrimonial capitalism to look at economic hybridity, its stability and relationship to political hybridity. Using examples from Russia and other former Soviet states it argues that economic hybridity is unstable and that it has a potentially negative affect on political stability generally

Himalayan Hybridity and the Evolution of Ladakhi Popular Music

Historically, Ladakh in the Western Himalayas was a significant nexus of Trans-Himalayan caravan trade, and thus exhibited a significant hybridity in its material, linguistic, religious, and musical culture. In this paper, I examine the rise of Ladakhi popular music in and through these crossroads, paying attention to themes of hybridity. I look at the development of Ladakhi ethnic, political, and musical identity, and the role of government, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and individuals with regard to the rise of new musical genres. Accompanying the historical survey of the music is as discussion of the evolutions of textual content. Changes in mass media technology and economics have had a profound effect on this remote region, and have shaped how cultural identity is negotiated by both song writers and consumers of popular music

The Theological Misappropriation of Christianity as a Civilizing Force

The theological misappropriation of Christianity as a civilizing force occurs when individuals convert to Christianity due to deception that ignores the faith-based aspect of Christianity. The history of Western education in India illustrates the hidden curriculum that Christian missionaries employed to disrupt the Indian educational system. This unnerving pedagogy points to the need for a postcolonial theoretical framework that relates the inescapable hybridity of religion and culture where Orientalism has the potential to occur. To press the ongoing urgency of this discussion, I convey how the history of British India connects to my lived-reality as an American Hindu. Overall, I point to hybridity as a lived paradox of ambiguous conflict that embraces interfaith relations. I offer implications for Christian missionaries today to foster authentic interfaith connections without engaging in colonizing ideologies

HYBRIDITY POTRAYED BY MAJOR CHARACTERS IN THE NOVEL “CRAZY RICH ASIAN” BY KEVIN KWAN

This research was conducted to figure out kinds of hybridity that major characters did in the novel “Crazy Rich Asian” by Kevin Kwan. This study was analyzed by using postcolonial approach with theory of hybridity by Homi K. Bhabha. According to Bhabha, hybridity is the mixing of two or more different culture and create a new culture that has both culture characteristic. It can be said that hybridity is the result of cross culture that appears in society due to cross cultural interaction that happened for a long time. Descriptive qualitative method was used in this research to analyse social problems happened in the novel. Based on the analysis that had been conducted, there were two kinds of hybridity found out in the novel “Crazy Rich Asian”. They are ethic hybridity and lifestyle hybridity. The ethic hybridity was found in Rachel and Eddie’s mindset. Their mindset were more like American than other characters. Lifestyle hybridity was found in Astrid lifestyle which more like westerner than her husband

Cultural Hybridity and Modern Binaries: Overcoming the Opposition Between Identity and Otherness?

This working paper addresses the debate on cultural hybridity. Hybridity, as it is understood in postcolonial theory, is perceived as having the potential to go beyond the sort of modern binaries from which, as Ulrich Beck suggests, contemporary social imaginaries have to find a way out. According to Jan Nederveen Pieterse, hybridity is precisely that: "Hybridity is to culture what deconstruction is to discourse: transcending binary categories." Yet, as it is pointed out in many works discussing cultural hybridity, the term and the vast array of concepts it encapsulates has raised already long-running discussions and debates. The paper explores some tropes inspired by the debate between Homi Bhabba and Jonathan Friedman on cultural hybridity. As Friedman sets his critique of hybridity in opposition to what he considers "true" cosmopolitanism to be, we will show how his understanding can be considered as flawed and how hybridity can in turn be considered as being less but meaning more than cosmopolitanism. The paper does not provide a comprehensive study of hybridity theories or of the debates around it, and rather offers a starting point for a wider reflection on contemporary modes of social exclusion and inclusion

Ziya Gökalp's Idea of Cultural Hybridity

This paper is a reflection on the distinctiveness and scope of the ideas of Ziya Gökalp (1876-1924), who played a key role in the formation of the ideology of the Turkish Republic created in 1923. Gökalp is generally cast by interpreters as a “Westernist” or “modernist” nationalist thinker, like many other thinkers in late developing societies, whose chief concern was the establishment of a modern Turkish nation-state and who, therefore, tried to combine Western knowledge with the culture of his own society. Contrary to received wisdom, I argue that Gökalp developed not just a model of modernity befitting Muslim Turks but also a distinctive general theory of social life, according to which the cultures of all societies are hybrid, i.e., blends of other (past and present) cultures. If this is correct, then Gökalp’s social thought is more than a mere specimen of late nationalist ideologies; it is applicable to all forms of social life just as much as the ideas of the European social theorists he cited