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Intersecting Gender and Race in Globalization: Beyond the Evolution from Cultural Imperialism to Cultural Hybridity

Abstract

Contemporary trans-cultural flow negates the dominant-subordinate binary scheme suggested by early cultural imperialism. Indeed, it is a complicated, ambiguous, and multilateral process. This essay explores how the theories of global trans-cultural influence have evolved in the realm of communication research since the 1960s. It first examines how the discourse of globalization has historically moved from cultural imperialism to cultural hybridity. It then attempts to intersect such evolution with issues of gender and race. This essay is theoretically grounded in the intersection of cultural hybridity and postcolonial feminism. Further, it owes its empirical approach to feminist ethnographers who try to encompass the diversity of women all over the world. Such scholarly frameworks can be intertwined in terms of their overarching concern, i.e., cultural hybridity, feminism, and ethnography strive to empower the powerless, such as women and the Third World, while criticizing the unequal distribution of power. I seek to grasp a “backward” global flow, i.e., subversive engagement of indigenous people with global media empowered by cultural hybridity and postcolonial feminism. More specifically, as an Asian feminist who is studying in the United States, I desire to de-Westernize the discourse on subaltern women and let them speak.

Sueen Noh

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