Barcelona, 18 & 19 September 2008

Technological innovations and globalisation have helped to transform cultural practices. The borders between the field of the cultural (an area that is extensive, controversial and ambiguous) and that of other sectors of human activity (work, politics, art) are being moved. And the multiple forms of communication, interaction and mediation that coexist in our societies now structure an expanding public space that is made up of diverse cultural practices which are sometimes unknown but which is still a space of people who have been socialised by their experiences. For some of them, this public space unifies and banalises personal behaviour; for others, in contrast, its expansion as a consequence of trans-cultural phenomena presents new challenges, new possibilities of fullness and exchanges.

The demand for cultural diversity, in practice, often result in greater segregation and differentiation. These unexpected effects are combined with the dimension of antagonism in the “Us and Them". Nevertheless, one of the functions of culture, in its widest sense -as a way of being, doing, feeling and saying- is to shape the relationships between individuals and groups, in order to build common sense.

We plan to question the processes of communication in their function of mediation and their capacity to generate a common imaginary and a feeling of belonging. How can we achieve perspectives that provide cultural practices, in all their diversity and involving everyone, with the means to participate in a project of society, to build social links and strengthen intercultural dynamics?

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