Globalization as Hybridization
Globalization is understood here as "hybridization," in which forms become separated from existing practices & recombine with new forms in new practices. It is argued that globalization primarily involves neither universalization nor even multiculturalism, but instead, interculturalism. Globalization is not a condition of modernization, but instead, a historical epoch, beginning from the 1960s & contemporaneous with postmodernity. Both functionalist modernization theory & Marxist dependency theory are modernist paradigms of the period of the nation-state, while true globalization theory is the postmodern analysis of hybridity. Cultural hybridity is a universal, eg, the interface of transnational firms & host national government in offshore banking, or instances in which multiculturalism becomes interculturalism, in which an individual has a choice of a plurality of ethnic organizations as a basis of a multiple identity. Of special interest is a cultural hybridity between enemies, involving the formation of a "global field" of "global memory," circumscribed by conflictual unity -- bound by common political & cultural experiences of, eg, Jew & Arab. 101 References. V. Rios