Identity constructions and bases of otherness in the countryside-city dyna- mics: an analysis of the film “Detrás de un largo muro”

Abstract

From the beginnings of modernity, the representations and images that have been built from the city to the countryside expressed the attempts of political, economic and ideological control of the rural space and its inhabitants. These imaginaries contrast with the regular, necessary and functional links that exist between urban and rural social and moral orders -which have diverse and changing material and symbolic implications. Both distance and closeness play important roles in the con- tact between “urban and rural cultures”. Besides, these cultural differences and affinities influence the construction of identities and alterities. This work analyzes the Argentine film “Detrás de un largo muro” (Lucas Demare, 1958) as a testimony of documentary analysis of the Dynamic relationship between the countryside and the city. This paper intends to investigate the identity processes and the construction dynamics of otherness, as well as to characterize the processes of urban segregation, linked to the construction of social imaginaries on the margins and the center of the city.