Description
Book SynopsisHybridity, the interaction of people and media from different cultures, is a communication-based phenomenon. Drawing on original research from Lebanon to Mexico and analyzing the use of the term in cultural and postcolonial studies (as well as the popular and business media), Marwan Kraidy offers readers a history of the idea and a set of prescriptions for its future use. Kraidy analyzes the use of the concept of cultural mixture from the first century AD to its present application in the academy and the commercial press. The case studies build an argument for understanding the importance of the dynamics of communication, power, and political-economy as well as culture, in situations of hybridity. Suggesting that such an approach will serve as a useful way to examine how media work in international context, he concludes the book by proposing a new method for studying cultural mixture: critical transculturalism.
Trade Review"This critical and wide-ranging study journeys into the sprawling worlds of hybridity and opens new avenues such as 'critical transculturalism'."-Jan Nederveen Pieterse, Sociology, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign "Hybridity addresses the competing analytical issues raised by the various senses in which hybridity and related metaphors have been used conceptually in globalization, cultural, and media studies discourses. Kraidy seeks to distinguish corporate from critical transculturalism and to argue for the merits of critical versions of transculturalism. I know of no other work which addresses these issues with Kraidy's sweep, or seeks to trace the historical utilization of hybridity as a sociological metaphor. This book will be a very valuable and lucid addition to contemporary debates."-John Downing, Director, Global Media Research Center, College of Mass Communication and Media Arts, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale "Marwan Kraidy does an incredible job of pulling together and synthesizing a tremendous volume of literature that crosses multiple disciplines. By deftly laying out various discussions about hybridity, Kraidy is able to place his own view into the terrain. His contribution makes important connections between 'political economy' and 'cultural studies.' This is a very useful book for anyone interested in the landscape of hybridity."-Thomas Nakayama, Hugh Downs School of Human Communication, Arizona State University
Table of ContentsPrefaceAcknowledgments1. Cultural Hybridity and International Communication2. Scenarios of Global Culture3. The Trails and Tales of Hybridity4. Corporate Transculturalism5. The Cultural and Political Economies of Hybrid Media Texts6. Structure, Reception, and Identity: On Arab-Western Dialogism7. Hybridity without Guarantees: Toward Critical TransculturalismNotesBibliographyIndex
