Hybridity in Hong Kong: Local Responses to Globalization among Women Activists.

In December 2003, Hong Kong was a bustling, thriving place. No longer worried about Hong Kong’s imminent handover to the People’s Republic of China, the local democracy movement basked in the success of its July 1st, 500,000 strong, anti-Article 23 demonstration. After a year’s delay due to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), the 5th East Asian Women Forum convened to deliberate on "globalization, gender mainstreaming, and traditional culture." Globalization and localization were alive and well in Hong Kong, but neither term adequately captures the vibrancy, courage, and sheer inventiveness of people organizing in real time. Instead, ?hybridity? has become the watchword for Hong Kong?s ?postcolonial? culture. This is especially the case for Hong Kong?s non-governmental organizations (NGOs) which are neither fully linked to the international community nor solely indigenous and local, but somewhere in between. ?[More] consequential questions of for whom and how [hybridity] works,? however, are necessary to delink the concept from its association with miscegenation, racism and colonial pasts. Through a political analysis of organizing within Hong Kong’s reinvigorated local democracy movement and the 5th East Asian Women’s Forum, this study seeks to critically explore a problematic dichotomy--globalization/localization--and its celebrated corrective, hybridity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]