KWOK-KAN TAM The Self as Cultural-Linguistic Hybrid

Globalization has become a topic of central concern for the twenty-first century, especially in the fields of anthropology, communication, sociology, economics and literary studies. Globalization is a process that is still developing and also a reality that has already shown its effects on different parts of the world in newer relations of interconnectedness and interdependence that have to be defined. Various theories of globalization, such as those by Immanuel Wallerstein (1989) and Roland Robertson (1989, 1992), have been proposed since the 1980s to explain, as well as to predict, the trend of development toward possible homogenization and the tensions thus created. Many of these theories focus on the emergence of a world economy as trademark of globalization. Yet, in the recent decade, more and more attention has been paid to the cultural aspect of globalization. The twenty-first century has been variously referred to as the age of globalization and as the information age. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, people who fail to recognize this fact are sure to lose sight of their own positioning in the structural transformation of society toward globalization. While globalization can be conceptualized as the shrinking of the world with possible threats to local cultures, what is of interest to scholars in the humanities and social sciences are the cultural effects, and not just the technological aspects, of this process that has produced more and more diversity. However diverse the theories of globalization and its effects may be, one fact which remains certain is that while the world has become seemingly less and less divergent in its shrinkage, there is evidence showing that the world has also become more and more pluralistic in its cultural development. The traditional categories of conceptualizing world cultures, such as the East versus the West, or the "first world " versus the "third world, " may no longer be adequate in analyzing the world we live in today. This very shrinkage an