A socio-political approach to exploring hybridity in higher education in Hong Kong

This paper discerns hybridity in higher education in Hong Kong taking the socio-political approach. The socio-political approach holds that higher education is a system essentially located within the social, political, and economic environment. On this basis, the discourse of the hybridity is divided in two stages: colonial era and post-colonial era. The former embeds this discourse in Hong Kong’s colonial history (1842-1997). Though the university was imported to Hong Kong by the British colonial government as an imperialist project that institutionalized Western civilisation in China, it was simultaneously connected to Chinese nationalism. This blend of colonialism and nationalism denotes a collaborative colonial governmentality and illustrates a paradigm of hybridity in the colonial era. The later draws heavily on the social, political and economic changes in post-colonial Hong Kong. Several incidents involving individual academic freedom and institutional autonomy of universities that occurred in Hong Kong after 1997 are studied. These controversial incidents and associated confrontations in the university sector are regarded as signals of an ongoing hybridization process in the city. Copyright © 2018 CIES. All Rights Reserved.