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E-book Knowledge and Civil Society
Knowledge has been the focal concept in this book series. Beyond the many con-ceptualizations of and ascriptions to this term, knowledge denotes the human under-standing of concrete and abstract phenomena of the world in which we live. Human understanding differs from data and information in that it is built and rests in peo-ple’s minds. Whereas bits of data or parcels of commodity can be transferred, knowledge requires comprehension to be translated from one person to the other and from one place to the other. Though being bound to the individual, the creation and interpretation of knowledge remains a relational social process, often collabora-tive and situated within the confines of symbolic, cultural, and institutional frames (Glückler, Herrigel, & Handke, 2020; Meusburger, 2008). Hence, learning and knowing are geographically situated and contingent social practices (Bathelt & Glückler, 2011).Similarly to the notion of knowledge, the concept of civil society is also con-tested (Jensen, 2006) and has received contributions from various disciplines in a broad field of study. Researchers of civil society generally address “the diversity and richness of institutions, organizations and behaviors located between the ‘mar-ket’ and the ‘state’” (Anheier, Toepler, & List, 2010, p. V). Civil society encom-passes the so-called third or nonprofit sector, which, according to the widely used functional and operational definition of the “Johns Hopkins Third Sector” project, includes organizations that are formal or “institutionalized to some extent,” private or ”institutionally separate from government,” nonprofit-distributing, self-governing, and voluntary, “involving some meaningful degree of voluntary partici-pation” (Salamon & Anheier, 1992, pp. 136–137). Beneath this societal landscape of organizations, practices, and institutions, the concept of civil society is further connected to the public sphere (Calhoun, 2011; Habermas, 1991, 1996), to civic modes of behavior, social movements, or, as an “utopian project,” to self-governing democratic coexistence (Adloff, 2005, pp. 8–9).The relation between civil society and knowledge has several dimensions. Civil society organizations and civic practices are deeply involved in the creation, inter-pretation, and dissemination of knowledge.
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