Here and There: (Re)Situating Latin America in International Communication Theory

Since their origins in the late 1950s, Latin American communication studies have become increasingly institutionalized and thematically diverse. This evolution, however, has circulated to a limited extent beyond borders, as noted by North American scholars in the 1990s. Attentive to this problem, this article reviews how Latin America has featured in Communication Theory's archive since 1992 and introduces a Special Issue that incorporates recent contributions from the region into the journal's corpus. The analysis shows the extremely limited presence of Latin America in Communication Theory both in terms of substantial contributions to theory-building arising from the region, and of Latin American authorship. We argue that this state of affairs evidences the need for explicit editorial policies aimed at addressing the gap, and for increased cross-border interaction among scholars. The Special Issue hereby introduced contributes to resituating Latin America in international communication theory by foregrounding situated approaches generated in the region.