International popular culture in the 21st century

Abstract

In the years spanning from the 1960s to the 1980s, culture underwent a media and transnational reorganization. Unlike the criticism stemming from national traditions, Renato Ortiz innovated by proposing to question these transformations from the cultural industries and mass culture, showing that the administration of culture by large conglomerates was transforming the relationship between artistic creation, consumer habits and access to goods. Along with the contributions of Ortiz, we analyze the new changes, during recent years, in the interplay between the transnationalization of cultural industries, the supply of and access to symbolic goods, and, consequently, the political framework and our performance as citizens. To the media transnationalization outlined by Renato Ortiz, we add its reorganization provoked by technological convergence and the irruption of current networks. We study some of the main challenges this poses regarding cultures and politics. Following the digitalization of economic and sociocultural interactions, management practices in communication, appropriation of user information and the subordination of citizens-consumers by a few global administrators that characterize electronic capitalism, a question arises: what interculturality is possible without citizens? We briefly discuss new forms of counter-hegemonic resistance and question how to redefine citizenship, public, private and intimacy.

Keywords: international-popular culture, transnationalization of the media, interculturality, forms of resistance.