Resumen

SANCHEZ PARGA, José. El culturalismo: atrofia o devastación de lo social. Perf. latinoam. [online]. 2006, vol.13, n.27, pp.193-225. ISSN 0188-7653.

Culturalism, already present in the dominant ideology of Cultural Studies, is a complex phenomenon, that views culture at the crossroad of ideological, social, economic and political interests, linking it to present identitary and ethnicist obsessions, as a relativism that pretends to interpret and justify all social facts as a reflection of cultural differences. This article attempts to explain this modern culturalist phenomenology, by showing the manner in which it holds -in a very neo-liberal vein- a vision of culture without society, and even a reduction of the social to the cultural. Such an approach contributes to hide and neutralize the social logic that runs across the modern world. Even though "culturology", a paranoic discourse about culture has claimed inter-culturality as its main aspiration, it is incapable to understand that such an ideal becomes possible only when the "other" culture has meaning and value for one's own culture.

Palabras llave : postsocietal society; "reason market"; ethnicismes and identities; relativism; culture; interculturality; meaning differences.