Civilisation, Culture and the Hybrid Self in the work of Robert Ezra Park

Posted in Articles, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, Social Science on 2011-01-26 19:52Z by Steven

Civilisation, Culture and the Hybrid Self in the work of Robert Ezra Park

Journal of Intercultural Studies
Volume 27, Issue 4 (November 2006)
pages 413-433
DOI: 10.1080/07256860600936911

Vince Marotta, Senior Lecturer in Sociology
Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia

Contemporary discussions on hybridity in cultural and ethnic studies have overlooked the work of the Chicago sociologist Robert E. Park. Park’s idea of the “marginal man” and his work on cultural and racial hybridity can shed further light on the construction and representation of the hybrid self. The contribution that Park has made to a social theory of hybridity has been overshadowed by research conducted within post-colonial and cultural studies. I do not suggest that recent conceptualisations of hybridity are inadequate; rather that Park has something to contribute to contemporary accounts and in some cases anticipates some of the themes and issues surrounding the concept of hybridity. The following examination connects Park’s work on hybridity with ideas such as civilisation, culture and modernity and argues that a mild form of primitivism underlines his notion of the “marginal man”.

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Claiming the (n)either/(n)or of ‘third space’: (re)presenting hybrid identity and the embodiment of mixed race

Posted in Articles, Identity Development/Psychology, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, Women on 2010-07-09 21:05Z by Steven

Claiming the (n)either/(n)or of ‘third space’: (re)presenting hybrid identity and the embodiment of mixed race

Journal of Intercultural Studies
Volume 25, Issue 1 (April 2004)
pages 75 – 85
DOI: 10.1080/07256860410001687036

Torika Bolatagici, Associate Lecturer
School of Communication & Creative Arts
Deakin University, Melbourne, Austrailia

As a multiracial artist, I am interested in how people of mixed race have been represented in popular culture and how mixed race image-makers can redress popular representation and facilitate a movement beyond the dichotomy, which seeks to reduce us to the sum of our parts. In the footsteps of Evelyn Alsultany I advocate the creation of a new cartography—a space that is inclusive and beyond existing notions of race. To this end I embarked on a project of exploration of the representation of multiracial identity, drawing from Homi K. Bhabha’s notion of Third Space.

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Triumphant Miscegenation: Reflections on Beauty and Race in Brazil

Posted in Anthropology, Articles, Brazil, Caribbean/Latin America, History, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, Social Science on 2010-04-15 04:52Z by Steven

Triumphant Miscegenation: Reflections on Beauty and Race in Brazil

Journal of Intercultural Studies
Volume 28, Issue 1 (February 2007)
pages 83-97
DOI: 10.1080/07256860601082954

Alexander Edmonds, Professor of Medical Anthropology and Sociology
University of Amsterdam

In Brazil racial mixture, mestiçagem has been a dominant theme in the political and cultural re-imagination of the nation in the twentieth century. This paper approaches the role of mixture in Brazilian social life from the angle of aesthetics, looking both at Brazilian intellectual history and the commercial and medical beauty industry. It first discusses the aesthetics of race in the works of Brazilian scholar Gilberto Freyre. Second, drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, it shows how cultural constructions of race are reflected in the clinical practice of plastic surgery. Analysing cosmetic practices illuminates central tensions in the ideal of mestiçagem, but also reveals it as a distinct logic of race and beauty that contrasts with multiculturalism. As the beauty industry expands in the developing world, such cultural logics may not be erased but rather incited.

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Eurasian Persuasions: Mixed Race, Performativity and Cosmopolitanism

Posted in Articles, Asian Diaspora, Media Archive, Social Science, Women on 2009-11-06 21:53Z by Steven

Eurasian Persuasions: Mixed Race, Performativity and Cosmopolitanism

Journal of Intercultural Studies
Volume 28, Issue 1 (February 2007)
pages 41-54
DOI: 10.1080/07256860601082921

Julie Matthews, Associate Professor
School of Education
University of Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

Eurasians are ‘in’. We are the poster children of globalisation. In Asia, and increasingly in the West, mixed-race Eurasian models charm us with their cosmopolitan chic. Terms previously used to demarcate impure outsiders such as Eurasian mixed-race, hybridity, mestiza, hapa, haafu, Euro-Asian and Anglo-Asian have recently been given an affirmative spin. This essay argues that the appeal, allure and persuasions of Eurasian/mixed-race are as much an effect of its commodified production as a cosmopolitan figure with automatic racial, cultural and national border crossing attributes, as its capacity and potential to claim for itself a location and space of visibility. Framed as a performative, the visual aesthetics and cosmopolitan attributes of Eurasian/mixed-race are explored in relation to postcolonial practices of racialisation and sexualisation under globalisation. Factors evoked in the constitution of Eurasian/mixed race delimit rather than preclude its promise of an expansive transnational/transcultural cosmopolitan future.

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