Latin American Interventions to the Practice and Theory of Communication and Social Development

Abstract

This chapter aims to highlight the legacy of Juan Díaz-Bordenave to the study and practice of communication and social development in Latin America and, of course, elsewhere. That aim will be pursued under the notion of “intervention,” defined by Cimadevilla (2004) as “the process through which an action is oriented to modify an intersubjectively identified state of reality, either of natural or social order, assuming further that the action in any of these dimensions affects the remaining” (p. 28), an art Díaz-Bordenave certainly mastered. The adoption of such a perspective would disclose the many ways his contributions have “intervened” for more than five decades the history of communication studies in Latin America, in terms as close as possible to his own written and spoken words.