Documentos CIDOB Dinámicas Interculturales; 5

This reflection analyses the possibility of intercultural dialogue in asymmetrical societies in the context of the systemic imperatives characteristic of the globalisation process. With this objective, the author takes as his source of study the local experience of the region of Araucania, in Chile, an interethnic, conflictive area, and as a global referent, the presence of a liberal economic model that is configuring a new world scene. Extrapolated to any typology of intercultural relations, albeit in a more incisive way and with greater empirical support for interethnic relations contextualised in human territories where there are unresolved social, cultural, political and economic conflicts, as in the case of Latin America, the author sustains the thesis of the need for two-way intercultural dialogue on the basis of the current pre-eminence of a one-way interculturality characteristic of asymmetrical societies, taking three blocks as his starting points. The first one is aimed at arguing the need for this kind of dialogue; the second presents the difficulties in becoming specific about two-way intercultural dialogue as a revitalising matrix for a less asymmetrical landscape, after distinguishing the dimensions of the socio-political, sociocultural and epistemological reality; and, finally, the third block indicates some objectives that philosophy could propose as a means of participating academically and socially for achieving intercultural bidirectionality.

Mario Samaniego Sastre, School of Anthropology, Catholic University of Temuco, Chile

issn: 1698-2568 (print edition)
issn: 1698-5516 (online edition)

32 pp.

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