Page 127 - CULTURE IN THE COMMUNICATION AGE

JORGE A. GONZÁLEZ

Cultural fronts: sub-processes, processes,
and meta-processes
We find tension, instability, and precarious order at different levels of analysis.
Following the suggestions of Piaget and Garcia (1989), any cultural front can be
established and studied at three levels. First, at the level of sub-processes, we have
to describe the intra-object relations between each one of the front’s own
elements. Normally, this stage implies a thick description and phenomeno-
logical approach to the specificity of each component. For instance, an accurate
description of the key spaces of interaction during a regional fair can satisfy this
level. Or, in our study of the production of Mexican television soap operas
(González 1998: 90–1), the intra-object level was concentrated in relations and
activities of the production crews.
At the second level, the processes, we identify the inter-object relations that
link components or elements. We enter this level only when we establish sets of
differing relations between, for instance, the components of a regional fair
(marketplace, expositions, ballroom, cockfighting arena, and so on). The level of
processes in the soap opera study arrived when we established relations
between all the production crews and the organizational structure of the
broadcasting corporation, Televisa.
Finally, the highest level of complexity comes when we study the meta-
processes, in which we have to establish the trans-object relations between our
analytical components. Meta-processes can be interpreted as third-order rela-
tions, that is, relations concerning the meta-relations of phenomena. They
actually operate as, and should be considered to be, contour conditions, or
external perturbations, for second-level processes. That is why Piaget and
Garcia (1989) use the expression ‘trans-object relationships’. For example, the
symbolic structures of the regional fairs interact with the cultural enter-
tainment industries through icons, objects, artists, messages, and broadcasting
practices. In the case of Mexican soap operas, the meta-process level is the
structure of the field of entertainment and the world market of fiction. With
these tools we can set forth very different levels of cultural conflagration and
conflict: intra-cultural front (first-order relations), inter-cultural fronts (second-
order relations between different cultural fronts), and trans-cultural fronts (third-
order relations). That is what I mean by the systemic construction of cultural
fronts as an analytical framework and methodological instrument.

Constructing cultural fronts: the
methodological strategies
The kind of methodological strategy that complex social processes implies and
merits is at the same time itself multiple. It includes the use of various research
questions and techniques for an adequate construction of observables, and
the employment of complementary methods of analysis for processing and

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