Global System, Globalization and the Parameters of Modernity

Abstract

A systemic approach is used to "classify the classifiers" who are popular if not dominant in globalization debates. It is argued that Western theorists of hybridity are in fact not much of an improvement on straight-forward modernization theory. The notion of hybridity, like the cultural universalism of modernization theory, is seen as denying the peripheries of their own identities. Implicit & integral to theories & strategies of creolization & hybridity is the disauthentication of Third & Fourth World identitites. It is claimed that the growing influence of hybridization theorists is due to the crisis of modernity in the core itself. World systems theory is given a culturalist twist through the views that globalization is essentially civilizational in nature, ie, already being present millenia before the hegemony of world capitalism, & that world systems are not primarily political or economic, but cultural phenomena. The systemic critique of hybridity theories informs the understanding of culture, not as substance, but as process. The focus is not on the hybridity of cultural artifacts, but on the cultural practices in the creation & reproduction of identity spaces. 1 Figure, 18 References. V. Rios