Using cultural hybridity as an analytic lens for missiological research

This article considers cultural hybridity as a concept that helps interpret complex social phenomena found in various intercultural contexts in missions. The concept of cultural hybridity is better used as an analytic tool rather than an object of analysis in order for it to have an interpretive power. Adopting cultural hybridity in missiological research requires focusing on its active, dynamic, and processual nature found in the verb form, “hybridization,” rather than a stationary concept depicted by the noun form, “hybridity.” When using cultural hybridity in empirical studies, the mission researcher needs to develop a framework using the concept by immersing in the prior and current scholarly discussions, analyze social processes at multiple levels, utilize the hybridity theory in conjunction with other relevant social theories, and close the gap between the theory and data by focusing on how things work rather than forcing meanings out of the data. These practices may aid missiologists in their empirical research and increase their understanding of challenging intercultural issues.

Hybridity of the Jewish Diaspora Characters in Pearl S. Buck's Novel Peony (1948)

This research aims to investigate the hybridity of the Jewish diaspora characters in Pearl Sydenstricker Buck's novel Peony (1948). Peony (1948) raises identity issues especially within the Jewish diaspora characters. The qualitative method is used in collecting, interpreting, and analyzing the novel Peony as the main data. The data analysis uses the theory of identity and hybridity in analyzing characters in the novel. The theory of identity is used to analyze the intercultural interactions among the characters of different ethnic backgrounds which shapes a contestation of identity among characters in the novel. Hybridity theory is also used to analyze how Jewish diaspora characters transform into hybrid characters in responding the contestation of identity. Through the observation of how the contestation of identity happens among the characters, this research shows that the Jewish diaspora characters in Peony use hybridity as strategy to win the contestation of identity among characters in the novel.

On the Edge of Empire

This chapter borrows from middle-ground studies and related hybridity theory to argue that the Syro-Anatolian Culture Complex (SACC) was on an equal cultural footing with its much more politically powerful neighbor, the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Although Assyria would come to conquer most of SACC by about 700 BCE, for several centuries the two entities influenced one another culturally, an influence that is visible in their cultural products like wall reliefs and monumental statuary. In several cases, these reliefs and statues deliberately fused elements from both places to produce newly significant products, often in ways that emphasized Syro-Anatolian cultural priority even in the face of political domination. Beyond the fusion of iconographic tropes in isolated artworks, this chapter surveys the archaeological record of Syro-Anatolian cities that continued in use past the Assyrian conquest, demonstrating that in nearly all cases these cities’ architectural traditions were unmolested even while new Assyrian buildings were constructed, such that these cities themselves became hybrid entities of Assyrian and Syro-Anatolian cultural production.

Pembentukan Identitas Baru Tokoh Imigran dalam Empat Cerpen Karya Dua Pengarang Berlatar Belakang Imigran Wladimir Kaminer dan Dilek Güngӧr

This research aims to reveal the depiction of formation of the new identity of immigrant characters in four short stories written by two immigrant authors in contemporary German literature, Wladimir Kaminer and Dilek Güngӧr. This study discusses how the immigrant characters build their new identities and their self-subjectivities in four short stories, namely “Schlechte Vorbilder”, “Deutsch-russisch Kulturjahr”,” Geld oder Leben” and “Blondes Barbie”. This study applies Hall’s (1990) identity theory and Bhabha’s (1994) hybridity theory. This study uses the qualitative approach with the descriptive-analytics method. The result of this study argues that the identity formation of immigrant characters is performed by imitating other cultures and presenting the past memory of the immigrant characters in their present lives as an effort to liberate the immi-grant characters from their otherness and to build their self-subjectivities. In addition, the depiction of formation of the immigrant characters’ new identities also shows that identity is a fluid concept, and a means of rejection of the two immigrant authors towards the essentialism concept of identity.

The Afro-Asian Analogy

If the spate of recent publications on transnational Afro-Asian connections is any indication, we may have finally arrived at a welcome third stage of ethnic studies, one long postponed by a standoff between a multiracial model limited by a national horizon and a diasporic model that lacked a historical ground for conducting cross-racial analysis. The neo-Bandung allegiance of this Afro-Asianism—most prominent in the work of Vijay Prashad and Bill Mullen—explicitly aligns itself against the postnationalist ethos of hybridity theory and in favor of a toughened anti-imperial stance. There is much to admire about this critical turn; its increasing influence is surely a sign of our worsening times, reflected in the difference between the postsocialist euphoria of the 1990s—which projected the radicalization of democracy through the articulation of class with race, gender, and sexuality—and the return of empire and its banalization of democratic rhetoric after 9/11. Despite this Afro-Asianist project's more open recognition of the relevance of Asian embourgeoisement to its own desire for a renewed resistance politics, however, it is not yet clear whether the retrieval of Third Worldist genealogies accomplishes something more than a nostalgic response to the rise of Asian capitalism on a world scale and to the thinning claim of Asian American intellectuals to any representative function. And yet, to fulfill the originary promise of ethnic studies, which emerged out of the articulation between anti-imperialist and anti-racist struggle in the late 1960s, this is what it must and should do.

Hybrid with What? The Relationship between Jewish Culture and Other People’s Cultures

This chapter examines some problems posed by the Jewish pluralism paradigm. With regard to the metasolution of influence, there is a firm article of faith shared by practically all of today's Judaica scholars that, in all times and places, pre-modern or ‘traditional’ Jews lived in intimate interaction with surrounding cultures to the point where they may be considered to be embedded in them and, consequently, indebted to them in terms of culture. This contrasts with an older conception of Jewish culture which represented Jews as living in at least semi-isolation from the non-Jewish world. The chapter thus demonstrates that there are more than these two possible approaches to the history of Jewish culture, and that these two themselves should be understood in a more sophisticated way. It asserts that the first approach (universal cultural influence, in its incarnation as hybridity theory), when applied mechanically, unimaginatively, and uncritically can be as ideological, dogmatic, and inappropriate as the second (Jewish cultural autonomy) often has been. The chapter next contemplates the metahistories implied by the various approaches to Jewish cultural history and their relationship to intellectual presuppositions for engaging in Jewish studies in the academy.