Mapping the global popular in Hong Kong : re-articulations of the local, national and transnational in contemporary cultural flows

Given the time limit, what I am going to do is to give a rough sketch of an analytical framework that I find useful for thinking about culture in the age of globalization. I hope it will allow us to see how it also articulates with the problems of education and economy. I will not be able to give any solutions except an overall framework to help us identify what actually may be relevant when we want to deal seriously with culture in the contemporary era.

From a critical cultural perspective, I think the questions we face today are: what are the new signs of shared meaning and value, and indeed new forms of identification in our time? What, for instance, are some of the new symbols, configurations and patterns of circulation that shape some versions of the global or globalized identity in Hong Kong? The answers to these questions, I think, have to be considered in context. They relate to the kind of collective self-imaging that Hong Kong people have been reproducing for themselves in the last couple of decades or so.