Search

Popular, meaning "a space of deep conflict", has gone a long way in order to be recognized by those in charge of studying social communication and culture in Latin America. Due to political changes and the reemergence of "democracies" in most part of the Continent, the preeminent paradigm, in the last two decades, has left its place to another one that recognizes and appraises the existence of new historical theoretical issues like trans-nationalization of culture, the meaning of the national, the emergence of ethnical considerations, masses, urban concerns; etc. All these topics are reviewed by the author in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper intends basically to present the theoretical discussion over the category "Cultural Fronts" as on interpretative tool for the various struggle processes in order to obtain a more legitimate definition of the meaning of certain topics of everyday life. In the first place, the discussion will reach the four big issues where the Cultural Fronts are located: a) The social construction of the meaning, b) Hegemony and Cultural Power social constitution, c) The struggle for cultural legitimacy, d) The "trans-class" cultural elements and everyday life. Different sociological concepts will be shown, according to three possible levels of cultural analysis, in order to locate the place and the scale where the new category may be used. After the presentation and the discussion of the background and the categorical elements, a characterization of the Cultural Fronts is made, within the polisemic and the semantical implication of its composition. They are located both as struggle spaces or fronts, and simultaneously, as boundaries or limits for a specific contact between cultural conceptions and practices of different groups and classes that coexist in the same society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]