Cultural organizations, networks and mediators: an introduction

Abstract

This chapter sheds light on conceptual and methodological issues to deal with the analysis of cultural international organizations from a network and cultural mediation approach, as well as to offer both unexplored figures and overshadowed scales in their relations to the wider world. Specifically, this chapter aims to demonstrate the impact and prominent role of Ibero-American cultural mediators, who were part of a transnational, multilingual, highly connected and mobile elite until the Second World War. The chapter stresses cultural interchanges, cultural movements, and multi-stranded connections through “soft power” across borders, nations, regions, and continents and focuses less on discursive products and more on the reality of institutional mediating practices and individuals: the establishment of transnational and trans-regional networks, their role in the first waves of institutional developments, or their active part in transferring ideas into another culture.