Possible Semiotic Worlds of the External Actors of the Organización Barrial Tupac Amaru

Abstract

This paper aims to provide an outline of the Possible Semiotic Worlds of the Tupac Amaru Neighborhood Association among external actors. This will make it possible to establish a context of meaning and interpretation of the organization, which may later be contrasted and complemented with the presence of certain forms of the “University of the Street” found in the selected organization, thus advancing in the development of this scenario.

Interviews were conducted with people who are not directly part of the organization—external actors—men and women aged 18 and over.

The responses were analyzed from the perspective of symbolic semiotics, applying the following semiotic operations: normalization, segmentation, the formation of contextual definitions, the development of axes, and the formation of contrasting networks. It is considered that, through social discourses, a given community represents and interprets the phenomena of its environment. Discourse is understood as any event that constructs that of which it speaks: it is a limited set of statements that depends on the same discursive formation and appears under a set of conditions of existence (Foucault, 1970).

The aim of this research is to obtain information about how the organization is perceived by people in general. This first stage is the one presented in this paper.

The results obtained will later serve to inquire within the organization into its objectives and into what its members think. The contrast between external and internal Possible Semiotic Worlds will make it possible to obtain relevant data for the research on how Jujuy society interprets the organization under study, and how the organization interprets itself.

The research carried out in the organization so far has made it possible to identify internal teaching-learning aspects, such as the existence of a career path within the Construction Cooperatives, where learning takes place mainly through imitation (Conte and Paolucci, 2001), and the transmission of values linked to education, social reintegration, and work.