Abstract

GONZALEZ VELEZ, César Augusto. Official language in instances of local participation and some of its implications for the legitimation of political inequality. Rev. colomb. soc. [online]. 2017, vol.40, n.1, pp.233-256. ISSN 0120-159X.  https://doi.org/10.15446/rcs.v40n1.61960.

Political participation is a topic of vital interest to understand the relationships be tween the State and civil society in the contemporary world. This is of particular interest to Colombia due to the central position it has acquired in the political management of different social processes. This article seeks to contribute to the study of political partici pation through an approach to a specific case in the neighborhood of Engativa, Bogota and a discussion about the role of the official language (of regulations and institutions) in the reproduction of inequality in instances of political participation. These instances refer to the spaces created by the Government from the 1991 Constitution for dialog, discussion and joint decisions with some population groups, particularly those that revolve around issues of gender identities, life cycle or ethnicity.

In this scenario, the central question concerns the internalizing of the official lan guage in maintaining asymmetrical relations between agents of political participation and public institutions; this is one of the questions that prompted the study: "Community Organizations and Instances of Political Participation in Engativá", a project funded in 2014 by the III Internal Research Call of the Minuto de Dios University and published in the book Los convidados de piedra de la participación local (The Silent Guests at Lo cal Participation). The thesis defended throughout the article is that while the agents of participation (especially popular representatives) conceive the internalizing of the official language as a "gain" in their process of assertion before the local government, this same language limits the possibility of instituting their agencies and finally skews their knowl edge, methodologies, intentions and practices.

Keywords : cultural capital; social capital; qualitative research; institutional language; political participation..

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