Faculty Publications

Autochthonous Cultures And The Global Market

Document Type

Article

Journal/Book/Conference Title

Latin America Writes Back: Postmodernity in the Periphery: (An Interdisciplinary Perspective)

Volume

28

First Page

123

Last Page

157

Abstract

An examination of the intercultural dynamics of a country such as Guatemala in its relationship with economic and cultural globalization, and, consequently, with central as well as local Modernity and Postmodemity, implies proposing the study of popular cultures as processes located differentially outside of the circulation of the messages of popular (mass) culture, in order to place them in the spaces of hybridization in which icons and contents are fused and con-fused with the iconographies and imaginaries produced by the culture industry for the masses. Yet this industry is also popular, because it is consumed by the people, and is also culture, because it constructs meanings which perform social functions of identification, cohesion, and legitimization. 1 Likewise, it implies situating the analysis of the production and consumption (reception) of traditional cultures in the space and dynamics of the market, since the market constitutes the main mediator that permits the circulation of symbolic goods and the creation of conglomerates of consumers of culture. The market creates the necessary conditions for the creative and contestatory consumption of the culture industry’s symbolic goods, carried out on certain occasions by the popular conglomerates of Latin America, thanks to the positionalities sui generis they assume in the globalizing market (Garcia Canclini, Consumidores).

Department

Department of Modern Languages

Original Publication Date

1-1-2013

DOI of published version

10.4324/9780203726921-15

Link to Full Text

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