Receiving and resisting: Toward a market-driven cultural hybridity

Abstract

This study proposes an approach to cultural hybridity that centers the market, not geopolitical borders or regions, as the driving force of cultural hybridization. In this model, cultural hybridity manifests on a continuum between market-receptive hybridity, which incorporates cultural characteristics of the dominant market, and market-resistant hybridity, which limits the influence of cultural characteristics of the dominant market. To illustrate, this study identifies market strategies and examines how Colombian musician Shakira and Mexican musician Lila Downs employ various practices to create market-receptive and market-resistant cultural hybridity across their careers. This market-driven approach to hybridity decenters the countries of the Global North, contributes to ongoing efforts to undo the historical homogenization of the Global South, and works to explain cultural hybridity as the result of markets, not countries, allowing the framework to be applied within or across regions.