The Ambivalences and Circulation of Globalization and Identities 118 The Ambivalences and Circulation of Globalization and Identities: Sexualities, Gender, and the Curriculum Lisa W. Loutzenheiser Lisa W. Loutzenheiser Lisa W. Loutzenheiser Lisa W. Loutzenheiser Lisa W. Loutzenheiser University of British Columbia Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, Summer 2005 Until working on this article, I had not thought about the ways in which both metaphorically and quite literally, I am a product of globalization. When my parents met in Jakarta, my mother was an executive secretary for an American firm located in Singapore, and my father was a sales representative for a ubiquitous “import/export” firm. They married, moved to Saigon, and lived the colonial life, as the U.S. replaced France economically and militarily. Two years later, they took up residence in Taipei with the goal of furthering the economic “growth” of the Taiwanese nation (and my family). Here, I was born. Finally, after a return “home” for a few years, there was a one-year move to set up a new factory in Tokyo. The multinational corporation, for whom my father worked, sent ‘us’ to encourage post-war, economic development in Japan, and open up Japanese markets to American corporations. These longer foreign residencies ended when I was 6, but I traveled and experienced other places because of the “advantages” that colonialism and imperialism offered my parents and through them, me. Perhaps, my interest in the confusions and complexities of identity, place and positionality flow from these discomforting roots. Or, possibly, one can trace the lineage of my concerns with articulating the circular flow of globalization, gender, and sexuality and their influence on the classroom, to the multiple and conflicting sites of my own difference and privilege. Thinking About Globalization Globalization, as I am utilizing it for this discussion, is best understood as a “process to examine the everyday movement of goods, services, finance, people, information, images, communication, crime, pollutants, drugs, fashion, culture, ideologies, and beliefs across modern territories— large and small” (McGrew, 1992, p. 470) . In order to delve into, and complicate these understandings, it is necessary to trouble the universalizing notions embedded within terms such as globalization