Interdisziplinäre Kulturstudien. Grundlagen der Kulturwissenschaften

One of the main issues of the contributions of the volume prepared for publication is the question wether in the face of the heterogeneity of present activites in the field of cultural studies and humanities a unique and coherent conceptual and theoretical framework for cultural research can be found and how it might look like. The approach the team of the contributers has chosen as point of departure is a theoretical model consisting of three main components: the concepts 1) of symbol and knowledge, 2) of society, history and culture in configuration and 3) the concept of the individual. All contribution deal in some form with these three theoretical elements. The model chosen may be traced back the traditional division of labour between disciplines in the humanities, between 1) philologies, philosophy, linguistics etc. as concerned with interpretation, 2) sociology, history and social anthropology dealing with the social or political dimension of cultural processes and 3) various disciplines of anthropology focussing on the role and understanding of the individual. The authors have tried in a process of transdiciplinary cooperation to demonstrate and elaborate the interconnectedness of the three conceputal dimension that should be brought together in a common theoretical frame for interdisciplinary cultural research. In chapter I, under the heading Forms, Media and Institutions of Knowledge some of the leading theoretical positions like phenomenology, systems theory, structuralism and poststructuralism are dicussed The issue of media of knowledge is presented by a contribution on the role of literacy in ancient greek systems of knowing and culture. The topic of institutions of knowledge in their historical development and context provides a frame to situate contemporary cultural research in the greater academic and theoretical context of science. Chapter II on Perception, Media and Aesthetics tries to open an fresh theoretical approach to Aesthetics as the analysis of presentations and representations of reality as a complex process of perception and thinking, of knowledge and memoy, of imagination and association. Chapter III deals with the historical, political and every-life-context of cultural processes. The contributions try to show that it is the social dimension that forms the basis both for symbolic articulations and expressions of individual agency. Chapters IV - VI are devoted to special issues; I: E: on the relation between techique and culture, taking literary presentations of body and self in recent science ficition literatur as example, and raises philosophical issuses of technique and human existence. Chapter V raises the issues of gender and gender difference in their cultural and social aspects while the last chapter, chapter VI, is raising core issues of conditio humana in an interdisciplinary approach, including philosophical and historical anthropology, medical anthropology, psychology and theology