*CFP* "COMMUNICATION TO IMAGINE DESIRABLE FUTURES IN LATIN AMERICAN", SPECIAL ISSUE, CONTRATEXTO JOURNAL

Contratexto is an Open Access refereed academic journal published by the Faculty of Communication at the University of Lima every six months (two issues per year from 2015), with emphasis on the field of communication and related branches, designed for academics, professionals and students of communication, social sciences and humanities. It edits articles, research papers, essays and bibliographical reviews in Spanish, Portuguese and English.

The 33rd edition of Contratexto will address the questions and challenges in the field of research in communication in the short, medium and long term, from a Latin American perspective.

In the words of the Venezuelan researcher Antonio Pasquali, in his speech at the last biannual Congress of the Latin American Association of Researchers (ALAIC), on the field of communication, he considered that its future involves communicating in diverse societies with inclusion, equality and democracy, because "only diversity is fertile". A diversity that characterizes our continent and that, in terms Jesús Martín Barbero, represents the place from which to think about communication, "with one's own head, the experience of today's world". 

The Argentine Gustavo Cimadevilla, current president of ALAIC, declared that "communication can be in the middle, sooner or later, inside or outside, but never far from the tensions that those struggles imply and that the human tensions hold." Finally, another speaker at the Congress, the Brazilian Cicilia Maria Krohling Peruzzo, translated the challenge through a question: Does communication help to build scenarios of equality or to reproduce inequalities?

The thematic dossier invites to think and design proposals that favor the reflection of communication and the future with imagination and creativity, has its horizon in the question of the future as a "starting point to give space to collective dreams and desires" (Merello, 1973). In addition, "because vision of the future and construction of futures are basic tools that allow to reduce dependence by gaining autonomy" (Uranga, 2016, p. 79). We understand that questions about the future of our societies are a way of answering those initial questions on whether or not communication contributes to the reduction of inequalities and the evolution of the field in societies with inclusion, equality and democracy. Now, if we assume that the future is an exercise in collective construction that involves different actors, communication can be thought of as the setting or territory that enables the encounter to agree or debate upon such visions. In that sense, we ask ourselves: What future you thinking/imagining in our continent? Which actors lead these visions? Is communication accompanying, through professional actions or knowledge generation, those processes of collective construction? Are there future visions in tension? Are there future taxes? Consensual? Visibilized? Invisible?

Thematic focus:

• Planning of communication in different scenarios: theoretical reflections that involve communication, planning and development. 
• Experiences of communicational intervention with focus on the desired future: the theoretical methodological experiences and reflections of today's social communication with a view to the future that acts as a horizon. 
• Methodological reflections on experiences that allow thinking about collective and social constructions in communities, organizations and groups. 
• Technical evolution and human interrelations: enunciations from the south. 
• Communication to build memory from the narratives of the actors and collectives.

Other sections

Besides the dossier, Contratexto has the following permanent sections:

1. Trends. This section compiles collaborations linked to current topics such as peace culture, semiotic analysis, intercultural studies, or any other topic where communication is a central component. 
2. Reviews. Bibliographical commentary of a recent publication, including a critical and scientific analysis regarding its contribution to communication studies.

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Deadline: November 15th, 2019