Communication and Interculturality

The paper will describe the centrality of the communicational strategy in policies aimed at poor communities and cultural ascriptions other than the dominant ones. In particular, it will analyse the Program of socio-sanitary intervention on population exposed to risk of contamination with lead in Villa Inflamable. The interest in this program lies in the difficulties that were manifested in transmitting to the affected population, sanitary practices and a food culture that would improve the quality of life of the community.

The program was developed from a multidisciplinary approach (having professionals as diverse as doctors, social workers, nutritionists, environmental specialists, psychologists, engineers, architects, nurses, biochemists, among others) and with a multisectorial point of view (through the participation of public institutions dependent on the different levels of the government, and the two most prestigious universities in the country). However, it lacked of a socio-anthropological perspective that would have facilitated the communication with the affected population and the introduction of induced preventive practices.

Villa Inflamable, is a marginal neighbourhood that grew near the Petrochemical Complex of Dock Sud in the Municipality of Avellaneda (Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina); its inhabitants are exposed to air, water and soil pollution. A lawsuit forced the State to monitor the health of citizens and the implementation of a series of measures to improve the quality of life of its inhabitants until the neighbourhood was relocated. The news derived in the interest of a team of anthropologists in the problematic, whose findings had an important repercussion in the academic world, although unknown for those who were in charge of the program.

This presentation will analyse the key role of sociologists and anthropologists in the elaboration of communication strategies aimed at communities that are culturally different from where those that were initially think for.