Cartographies of Hybridity: A Mexican American Case Study Exploring the Juncture Between Globalisation, Cultural Identity and Social Space

Abstract

This article will explore the impacts of globalisation on cultural identities and conceptualisations of social space. Using Mexican Americans as a case study, I will firstly consider the rise of the Chicano Movement; a cultural nationalist project that emerged amongst Mexican Americans in the 1960s. After examining cultural identities that emerged during this period, I will consider the subsequent rise of globalisation and how it has influenced identity-formations. I will demonstrate that Mexican Americans are reworking their identities in ways which go beyond the old cultural nationalist project towards new post-nationalist, cosmopolitan modes of identification. Parallel shifts are taking place in Mexican American constructions of social space, with nationalist conceptualisations of space now yielding to the notion of a borderlands. Lastly, I will consider how Mexican Americans’ changing views of social space are couched in different understandings of their own hybridity. I will hence attempt to produce a tentative sketch of a theory regarding the relationship between cultural hybridity and social space

Keywords

• iain brash prize, mexican americans, social space, chicano movement, cultural identity, globalisation, nationalism