Conceptualizing Cultural Hybridization: A Transdisciplinary Approach

Description

Within the context of globalization, cultural transformations are increasingly analyzed as hybridization processes. Hybridity itself, however, is often treated as a specifically post-colonial phenomenon. The contributors in this volume assume the historicity of transcultural flows and entanglements; they consider the resulting transformative powers to be a basic feature of cultural change. By juxtaposing different notions of hybridization and specific methodologies, as they appear in the various disciplines, this volume’s design is transdisciplinary. Each author presents a disciplinary concept of hybridization and shows how it operates in specific case studies. The aim is to generate a transdisciplinary perception of hybridity that paves the way for a wider application of this crucial concept Front Matter....Pages i-ix Questioning Hybridity....Pages 1-3 Cultural Hybridity: Between Metaphor and Empiricism....Pages 5-25 Circulating Objects and the Power of Hybridization as a Localizing Strategy....Pages 27-42 Conceptualizing Cultural Hybridization in Archaeology....Pages 43-58 One World Is Not Enough: The Transformative Potential of Intercultural Exchange in Prehistoric Societies....Pages 59-66 Adjusting the Image – Processes of Hybridization in Visual Culture: A Perspective from Early Christian and Byzantine Archaeology....Pages 67-93 Transfer of German Human Resource Management Practices: Replication, Localization, Hybridization....Pages 95-106 From Comparative Politics to Cultural Flow: The Hybrid State, and Resilience of the Political System in India....Pages 107-132 Hybridization in Language....Pages 133-157 New Zealand English: A History of Hybridization....Pages 159-172 From Myths and Symbols to Culture as Text: Hybridity, Literature and American Studies....Pages 173-194 The Agony of the Signified: Towards a Usage-Based Theory of Meaning and Society....Pages 195-214