Divergencias en la conceptualización de la relación entre culturas

Abstract

The conceptualisation of the relationship between cultures is a topic that is far from an agreement on what is the best term to analyse that reality. From different philosophical positions such as liberalism, republicanism, comunitarism or postcolonialism are given myriads of views on the matter, in which the pragmatic use of concepts also has played a role. In this paper, we aim to map the discussion in this field. For this task the debate has been divided geopolitically, thus it is presented, on one hand, the reality in the central modernity, and on the other, the state of the art in Latin America. We find out that, in many cases, the differences between the approaches are not as radical as they seem at a first glance in the discussion. Besides that, it is observed that there are certain points on which any suggestion regarding interculturalism should be pronounced, namely, the nature of identities, the characteristics of the Nation-State, the attitude towards western modernity, the acceptability of democracy and human rights as universal values, who are the intercultural subjects and if the relationships must be based on equality or on recognition.