An approach to “communication and culture”

History of a journey and its institutionalization

Abstract

“Communication and culture” in Latin America, as a point of view or perspective, came into its own in communication studies during the 1990s and 2000s, on the back of authors and ideas from the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. This bibliographic review attempts to chart the ways in which this point of view has been adopted. Current researchers use it frequently and the field of communication has given it plenty of space, yet “communication and culture” remains unclearly defined. This is why we aim to reflect on the production of ideas within its enunciatory context.  
To do this, we systematized a series of studies that take a historical approach to the field of communication, as we focus on how authors have tackled “communication and culture” in the past. Thanks to the contributions of intellectual history (Palti, 2014), we found that this analytical point of view has given rise to a definitional dispute, considering the enunciatory conditions of certain subjects at specific moments. That is, the “communication and culture” point of view arises in the context of theoretical discussions, such as the theory of dependence and the debates of the New Left, which have favored the qualification or expansion of “culture” as a concept, bringing in sociohistorical conditions and the exploration of social and cultural practices of disadvantaged groups.