Wir verstehen unsere Gesellschaft als wissen(schaft)sbasiert. Doch neuere Wissenschaftstheorien hinterfragen den Wahrheitsanspruch und damit die traditionelle Legitimation wissenschaftlicher Aussagen durch den Verweis auf die Abhängigkeit jeder Wissensproduktion von kulturell und historisch spezifischen epistemologischen, institutionellen, politischen und ökonomischen Machtverhältnissen, im globalen Kontext wächst der Unmut über die hegemoniale Macht westlicher techno-wissenschaftlicher Denknormen auf Kosten nicht-westlicher Wissensbestände und Praktiken. Andererseits beruhen weitreichende politische Entscheidungen zunehmend auf Expertenwissen, zum Beispiel in der Klima- und Energiepolitik. Vor diesem Hintergrund reflektieren elf Beiträge aus den Geistes-, Sozial- und Kulturwissenschaften über das Verhältnis von Wissen und Wissenschaft, über disziplinäre Bedingungen der Wissensproduktion und -legitimierung und über theoretische Ansätze in der Philosophie und Soziologie sowie praktische Modelle der partizipativen Wissensgenerierung in der Politikberatung, um neue Formen der Legitimierung zu prüfen.

Whatever societies accept as ‘knowledge’ is embedded in epistemological, institutional, political, and economic power relations. How is knowledge produced under such circumstances? What is the difference between general knowledge and the sciences? Can there be science without universal truth claims? Questions like these are discussed in eleven essays from the perspective of Sociology, Law, Cultural Studies, and the Humanities.

Special Focus: Law and Literature This special focus issue of Symbolism takes a look at the theoretical equation of law and literature and its inherent symbolic dimension. The authors all approach the subject from the perspective of literary and book studies, foregrounding literature’s potential to act as supplementary to a very wide variety of laws spread over historical, geographical, cultural and spatial grounds. The theoretical ground laid here thus posits both literature and law in the narrow sense. The articles gathered in this special issue analyse Anglophone literatures from the Renaissance to the present day and cover the three major genres, narrative, drama and poetry. The contributions address questions of the law’s psychoanalytic subconscious, copyright and censorship, literary negotiations of colonial and post-colonial territorial laws, the European ‘refugee debate’ and migration narratives, fictional debates on climate change, contemporary feminist drama and classic 19th-century legal narratives. This volume includes two insightful analyses of poetic texts with a special focus on the fact that poetry has often been neglected within the field of law and literature research. Special Focus editor: Franziska Quabeck, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany.

Contemporary Indian English Literature focuses on the recent history of Indian literature in English since the publication of Salman Rushdie's novel Midnight's Children (1981), a watershed moment for Indian writing in English in the global literary landscape. The chapters in this volume consider a wide range of poets, novelists, short fiction writers and dramatists who have notably contributed to the proliferation of Indian literature in English from the late 20th century to the present. The volume provides an introduction to current developments in Indian English literature and explains general ideas, as well as the specific features and styles of selected writers from this wide spectrum. It addresses students working in this field at university level, and includes thorough reading lists and study questions to encourage students to read, reflect on and write about Indian English literature critically.

This volume clarifies the meanings and applications of the concept of the transnational and identifies areas in which the concept can be particularly useful. The division of the volume into three parts reflects areas which seem particularly amenable to analysis through a transnational lens. The chapters in Part 1 present case studies in which the concept replaces or complements traditionally dominant concepts in literary studies. These chapters demonstrate, for example, why some dramatic texts and performances can better be described as transnational than as postcolonial, and how the transnational underlies and complements concepts such as world literature. Part 2 assesses the advantages and limitations of writing literary history with a transnational focus. These chapters illustrate how such a perspective loosens the epistemic stranglehold of national historiographies, but they also argue that the transnational and national agendas of literary historiography are frequently entangled. The chapters in Part 3 identify transnational genres such as the transnational historical novel, transnational migrant fiction and translinguistic theatre, and analyse the specific poetics and politics of these genres.

Whatever societies accept as "knowledge" is embedded in specific epistemological, political and economic power relations. How is knowledge produced and functionalized? What is the difference between knowledge and the sciences? Can there be science without universal truth claims? Questions like these, all of them highly relevant, are discussed in twelve essays from the perspective of Sociology, Law, Cultural Studies and the Humanities.

Modern science communication has emerged in the twentieth century as a field of study, a body of practice and a profession—and it is a practice with deep historical roots. We have seen the birth of interactive science centres, the first university actions in teaching and conducting research, and a sharp growth in employment of science communicators. This collection charts the emergence of modern science communication across the world. This is the first volume to map investment around the globe in science centres, university courses and research, publications and conferences as well as tell the national stories of science communication. How did it all begin? How has development varied from one country to another? What motivated governments, institutions and people to see science communication as an answer to questions of the social place of science? Communicating Science describes the pathways followed by 39 different countries. All continents and many cultures are represented. For some countries, this is the first time that their science communication story has been told.