Theorizing Hybridization: Negotiating and Leveraging Culture Across Transnational Fields

• In Event: 365 - Section on Sociology of Culture Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 03. Cultural Production

Abstract

Although scholars extensively study the economic dimensions of globalization, its cultural dimensions, including the cultural processes and transformations it catalyzes, are much less systematically analyzed, and therefore remain hotly debated. The debate around globalization’s cultural dimensions emerges in large part from the paucity of empirical data on how processes of translation or hybridization actually work on the ground. Indeed most research on hybridization is not based on any observed interactions at all. The extraordinary politicization of culture in an era of globalization therefore presents us with two interrelated enigmas we address in this article: how does hybridity emerge and get constructed, and how do organizations mediate processes of cultural negotiation across transnational fields? Our goal is to open the black box of hybridization and uncover the mechanisms that drive it on the ground. The research is unique not only because the case is Sesame Workshop which produces local versions of Sesame Street around the world, but also because it is one of the only hybridization studies to use observational data to track how actors make decisions about cultural adaptation in real time. Our analysis reveals how actors define and think about cultural authenticity and change, and how they weigh and attribute value, and how hybridization processes unfold. Here we expose the processes and mechanisms of hybridization itself, illuminating how cultural products transform across national and transnational fields.

Authors

• Tamara Kay, Harvard University

• Nicole Arlette Hirsch, Harvard University