By focusing on concepts of power, culture, and ideology in light of new socio-cultural and anthropological interpretations with regard to their use in international, intercultural, and cross-cultural communication research, an outline for the framework of a more hermeneutic-interpretive approach to the study of communication and socio-cultural change can be developed. Culture is not only a visible, non-natural environment of individual and organized subjects, but also and primarily his, her, or their normative context. In the patterning of their social existence, people continually make, principally unconsciously, choices that are directed by the applicable intracultural values and options. The social reality can then be seen as a reality constituted and cultivated on the basis of particular values, a reality in which the value system and the social system are completely interwoven and imbued with the activity of each other. In other words, in the study of concrete cases, it is necessary to be attentive to the following aspects: (1) the characteristics and dimensions of the cultural reference framework (i.e. the world view, the ethos, and their symbolic representation); (2) the interaction and interrelation with the environment of power and interest; and (3) the 'ideological apparatuses' by which the cultural reference framework is produced and through which it is at the same time disseminated. (Sixty-three references and one table of data are attached.) (RAE)

plus-circle Add Review

comment

Reviews