Territorial Extension Points as devices of triple mediation: evidence from Argentine university extension

Abstract

What institutional conditions foster the dialogue of knowledges in university extension? This article proposes
conceptualizing territorial anchoring devices as spaces of triple mediation: inward, within the university (articulating
cross-institutional transversalities); and between the university and the territory in a dual dimension (diversifying
linkages with horizontal actors and enabling conditions to move from the recognition of knowledges to their dia
logical thematization). Temporal continuity—materialized through sustained presence, permanent teams, and ter
ritorialized memory—constitutes an enabling condition for these mediations to operate in depth, as the dialogue of
knowledges rarely occurs in isolated encounters and instead requires sustained processes of trust-building, conflict
processing, and the progressive thematization of epistemic differences.
The proposal is developed through a comparative analysis of 47 extension projects at UNICEN (2018–2025), of
which 19 articulated with Territorial Extension Points (PET) and 28 did not establish such articulation. The findings
show that projects linked to PET exhibit greater intra-university transversal integration, higher public-community
density (particularly with grassroots organizations, collectives, and neighborhood forums), and a lower rate of fail
ure in the dialogical thematization of identified knowledges. The observed trend suggests that PETs do not produce
more knowledges per se, but rather generate the institutional conditions that make their dialogue possible.
The central contribution of this article is to demonstrate that critical extension requires stable territorialization
devices that mediate across three simultaneous and mutually affecting planes. Without these institutional condi
tions, the dialogue of knowledges tends to depend excessively on individual initiatives and faces greater difficulty in
being sustained at the institutional scale.