This paper suggests: Multivocality and cultural hybridity have long existed in Vietnam; The theoretical linkage of multivocality and cultural hybridity to the postmodern era is rooted in the West’s particular historical and cultural trajectories. Such a linkage does not work well in many non-Western contexts, including Vietnam. | VNU Journal of Science, Vol. 32, No. 1S (2016) 61-67 Cultural Hybridity and Postmodernism: Vietnam and the West Luong Van Hy* University of Toronto, Canada Received 06 October 2016 Revised 18 October 2016; Accepted 28 November 2016 Abstract: Postmodernism in Western humanities and social sciences emphasizes multivocality and cultural hybridity in the so-called postmodern era. On the basis of data on urban wedding ceremonies and rural spiritual space from northern and southern Vietnam, this paper suggests: 1. Multivocality and cultural hybridity have long existed in Vietnam; 2. The theoretical linkage of multivocality and cultural hybridity to the postmodern era is rooted in the West’s particular historical and cultural trajectories. Such a linkage does not work well in many non-Western contexts, including Vietnam. Keywords: Postmodernism, wedding, spiritual space, history, Vietnam Postmodernism which developed in architecture and the arts in the 1960s in the West spread quickly to other fields by the 1980s, including philosophy (.* Lyotard 1984) [1] and the social sciences (., Clifford 1983) [2]. In general, postmodernism argues that the grand theory/narrative/form of the modern period has given way to the multivocality and hybridity in discourse and culture in the postmodern era. We can see this multivocality and hybridity in architecture at the Louvre museum in Paris and 1 the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto . It is not a coincidence that postmodernism has spread quickly in the context of accelerating globalization in the past few decades, a period in which capital, labour, technology, commodities, people, ideas, and images move more easily and quickly among different corners of the globe. Illustration 1a. Louvre Musem, Paris, France. In this paper, from an anthropological perspective and on the basis of data on urban weddings and rural spiritual space in Vietnam, I argue that: 1. Multivocality and hybridity in discourse and culture have long existed in
