Associative experience for the citizen participation. The case of the "Otraprte" corporation

Abstract

The associative exercise proliferates in public contexts from the seventeenth century, as a practice of the rising bourgeoisie. In the twentieth century, with the questioning of the welfare state leading to the disenchantment of the state power, the association gains strength as a civic exercise par excellence. This growth of the associationist manifestations comes to be related with a neorepublican type of citizen that is doomed to deliberation and consensus, but in turn, in the context of a multicultural identity is a diverse and divergent citizenship. Experience of the Otraparte corporation as non-profit, and inspired by a divergent philosophical thought voluntary association, such as the Antioquian thinker Fernando Gonzales, is the unity of the associative process since, in this case, under the lens cultural management is a practice that takes some civic construction neorepublicans postulates, but unquestionably relates to a kind of cultural citizenship that resists imposed and restrictive forms, as well as a type of purely formalistic representative participation.