First Semester | 6 Credits | Quota: 120 | Dr. Alvin Wong & Dr. Fiona Law
Globalization has become the keyword to signify the profound changes common to contemporary human experience. This course provides an interdisciplinary and critical analysis of the impact of globalization on Hong Kong culture. We start by asking: What is culture? What are the important global cultural trends that Hong Kong also participate in and contribute to? What aspects of globalization are relevant to the study of Hong Kong culture? How can postcolonial Hong Kong culture offer new ways to understand the relation between the colonial past and the present global world order? How can we understand the global-local cultural dynamics that drives Hong Kong into the future? What will we learn about Hong Kong culture if we adopt new critical and self-reflective perspectives?
The course introduces key concepts and theories of globalization by focusing on cultural analyses and critical cultural responses to globalization. Particular emphasis is placed on the creative media, transnational cultural industries and global cultural phenomena relevant to everyday Hong Kong experience. This includes the analysis of Hong Kong’s participation in global cultural trends like the creation of cultural districts, the changing emphasis on cultural industries, the proliferation of urban redevelopment framed in terms of cultural heritage preservation and tourism, the conditions of cultural production and consumption, as well as the transformations in our everyday experience due to global cultural trends like the Disneyization and McDonaldization of society, new technologies of video and internet gaming.
Assessment: 100% continuous assessment