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The article focuses primarily on the theoretical and methodological intersection between Cybercultur@ and Participatory Action Research (PAR), recognizing their potential contributions to research with Emerging Local Communities of Knowledge (ELCK). This paper seeks to go beyond the conceptual discussion offering insights of an empirical research project titled “Emerging Local Knowledge Communities in Mexico", developed by the Laboratory of Complex Communication (Laboratorio de Comunicación Compleja of CEIICH / UNAM). The project was implemented in the context of the drylands of San Luis Potosí, Mexico between 2009 to 2012. One outcome of that research is a methodological proposal which is put forward here with the aim of contributing to the methodological development of applied social research in new directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mass media and the cultural industry as a whole have always been regarded as debilitating or even destructive of local and regional cultures, also putting at risk their cultural identities. The aim of this paper is to reflect upon alternative ways of thinking about the roles of the mass media and the possibility of creating new identities in a society which is becoming more complex and global. The analysis starts from empirical data on the cultural identity of the people of the southernmost Brazilian state, who, despite the mass media, and many times with its support, strengthen and renew themselves. The analysis is supported in theories that take into account the communicative aspect of culture and the cultural aspect of communication, that is, that give cultural status to mass media, allowing us to think of them an outlining element of new cultural identities. These identities can no longer be considered in traditional ways, but as a part of communication processes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper is based on an Anglo-French comparative study whose objective has been to link the normally separated fields of study, social mobility and the family. After presenting some crucial findings, the author rises the question that why family approach to the study of social mobility has been so slow taken by sociologists. A political reason linked to some stereotypes and a predominant “male” vision of society underlies this. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This collective paper takes a theoretical and empirical look at an unequal flows of television programs between cultures. This unequal change has been termed “media imperialism. ” The authors propose to look at the issues in terms of a more complex and dynamic set of relationships which they call “asymmetrical interdependence,” in which various nations and cultures have varying range of production and importation of TV programs, in context of a series of independent but asymmetrical relationships, economic, technological and cultural. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents the skeleton of a first-stage sample survey of six Mexican cities (Colima, Guadalajara, Leon, Mexico, Puebla and Veracruz) focusing on the different ways in which a probabalistic and quoted sample, representing approximately 85% of the Mexican urban population, perceives soap operas. An open and closed questionnaire, utilizing Likert's classic scales, provides much classified quantitative and qualitative information about who watches soap operas in Mexico (sex, social class, age), and the different ways in which viewers are related and have made a social appropriation of soap operas. This is one of the few current academic studies on the problematic relationship between social structures and television drama in Mexico. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]