Documento CIDOB Dinámicas Interculturales; 11

Jesús Martín Barbero puts forward five key factors for research, both for studies in the field of communication and for those in the field of culture. Given a subject that is doubly strategic such as, on one hand, the crisis being suffered by public policies in general and, on the other, the strategic dimension of considering communication and cultures together, he gives precedence to the crisis that politics is suffering, and how it has been gradually losing its symbolic density. As the first key factor, he proposes researching the crossroads that processes and specific practices represent. As the second, he refers to experiences of the public sphere and public policies (which show other voices than those of the “master of the world”). He continues by placing emphasis on the importance of the concept of sustainability when dealing with processes of homogenisation and differentiation. The paradigm of the fourth key factor is “network, the interface of proximity to rethink the community media beyond the engineering of transmitter/receiver”. He ends his proposals by calling for a commitment to reflect not only in terms of reflection but also in those of appropriation and empowerment: “to create policies that are minimally democratic, that is to say, that they take into consideration the transformations being carried out in the actual societies themselves”.

Jesús Martín Barbero
Lecturer at the Universidad Javeriana of Bogota and member of the National Council for Culture of Colombia

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

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