Politics

This series addresses social, political and economic issues of South Asia, set in the context of the historical and cultural space, religions and identities of the region, and ensconced in the heritage and memories that underpin them all. The series conflates both theory and area. It welcomes scholarship on a single country or part of a country, comparative studies looking at single problems across the region and research on global issues with significance for South Asia. The series aims at the academia, politics, media and the general public interested in issues of development, security, trade or tourism that bring South Asia – from Afghanistan to the Maldives – to the attention of the world.

Incisive social transformations turn the focus on spatial forms of organization of social relations. Changes such as the increasing survey of outer space and the growing visualization of the interior of the human body bring up the following questions: In what kind of spaces do we live? How are they created? Who is in charge? The interdisciplinary series sets itself the task to elaborate on these questions from various points of view.

The series of publications entitled “Freiburger Schriften zur Finanzwissenschaft und Wirtschaftspolitik” (“Freiburg Publications on Finance and Economic Policy”) publishes papers from the pre-eminent fields of economics research, which are also rich in tradition, at the University of Freiburg. The array of subjects which these analyses address ranges from the pension system and employment policy, education policy, demography, European and international governance, fiscal sustainability, federalism, healthcare policy, real estate economics, migration, tax and performance-based competition, the causes and effects of transnational conflicts, violence, crime, terror and corruption to behavioural economics and satisfaction research. These studies approach problems from both a theoretical perspective as well as using a selection of econometric, experimental or qualitative research methods. What links them is that they all address both political and social as well as topical academic issues. Their authors’ common, overarching goal is to provide well-founded recommendations on using their findings in politico-economic consulting and to help implement them.

Talk of the knowledge society is now almost universally accepted as a representation of social reality. Socially relevant actors have to adjust to it and (learn) to deal with it on a daily basis. However, academic reflections on this situation should not only state how strongly contemporary society depends on knowledge. They must also ask what is known about this knowledge itself and about society’s dependence on it. The question of knowledge in the knowledge society thus leads to the question of the opportunities and limits of the knowable, the intertwining of knowledge and non-knowledge with various forms of social logic, and an increase in knowledge conflicts. In this regard, the editors of this series want to offer an interdisciplinary discussion forum on this subject.

In the economy and society, exactly how work and organisation are conducted is extremely important. The changes in gender relations are closely related to this. Gender is a key aspect of diversity. However, age, disability, ethnic or social background, sexual orientation, religion and world view, to mention only a few of the relevant aspects in this respect, can also contribute to discrimination and disparagement in the workplace. This series aims to provide a forum for theoretical and empirical works on the subject of work, organisation and diversity, and to allow findings from current research projects, conferences and academic theses from the fields of sociology, psychology, economics and their related disciplines to be discussed.