I turni h prostorov Knjiga in ekonomiji kulturnih
TEMATSKI SKLOP Knjiga in e
Marijan Ikivic. Jernej Haljjan. Marfa>Ju«ui: prostorov (predgovor)
Mark«» Juvan: Kulturni obtok in knjiga: Književnost. vedncist, prostor in ekonomija (uvodni /.aris)
C6ar DOnifeguez: Obtok v predmoderni svetovni literaturi
Pa™3ppren Renesančno pesništvo, tisk in vloga Marina Drziea
Marijana Hamersak Kako so pravljice postale zvrst hrvaške otroške literature?
Dragns |ip:i: Literarni kanon v založniškem aparatu
Jeni. j Ha&ra Uspešnica kot trna škatla oddaljenega branja: primer Sherlock Holmes
Zasebna knjižnica Lojzeta KovaciCa in s\etoma Ekonomika in ideologije slovenskega literarnega
Alenka Koron: književnost
Marijan Dovič: posredništva
Maja BieaiLk: D\ojna \ loga pisatelja kot delavca In rcntnika
TiiJM Aunin: Predmet skupnega razumevanja medijskih sprememb
loL Šktil; Kompleksna igra knjig in \ najemno delovanje kulturnega transferja
Alu.vis Vcvitoii: Knjiga kol dinamičen sistem za koiiKKliiikicijo idej in kulturnih praks
Mili. Ko*»afi: Razumeti knjigo: Nekaj digresij o formah in pomenih AleS \tiupoilC: Knjiga in svetovni splet Anna Nolaro: Mnoge prihodnosti knjige
KRITIK K POROČILA
NtKKOLOG
TEMATSKI SKLOP Knjiga in ekonomija kulturnih prostorov THEMATIC SECTION The Book and the Economy of Cultural Spaces
I	Marijan Dovic, Jernej Habjan, Marko Juvan: Knjiga in ekonomija kulturnih prostorov (predgovor)
5	Marijan Dovic, Jernej Habjan, and Marko Juvan: The Book and the Economy
of Cultural Spaces (Foreword)
II	Marko Juvan: Kulturni obtok in knjiga: Književnost, vednost, prostor in ekonomija (uvodni zaris)
23	Marko Juvan: Cultural Circulation and the Book: Literature, Knowledge,
Space, and Economy (An Introduction)
37	César Domínguez: Circulation in Premodern World Literature: Historical
Context, Agency, and Physicality
51	David Šporer: Renaissance Poetry in Print and the Role of Marin Držic
65	Marijana Hameršek: How Did Fairytales Become a Genre of Croatian
Children's Literature? Book History without Books
79	Dragos Jipa: The Literary Canon in the Publishing Apparatus: The Book
Series "Les Grands Ecrivains Français" (1887-1913)
91	Jernej Habjan: The Bestseller as the Black Box of Distant Reading:
The Case of Sherlock Holmes
107	Alenka Koron: The Private Library of Lojze Kovačič and World Literature
121	Marijan Dovic: Economics and Ideologies of the Slovenian Literary
Mediation
141	Maja Breznik: The Double Role of the Writer as Worker and Rentier
157	Tiina Aunin: The Book as an Object of the Shared Understanding of
Media Changes
165	Jola Škulj: A Challenging Game of Books and the Free Interplay of
Cultural Transfer
177	Alexis Weedon: The Book as a Dynamic System for the Commodification
of Ideas and Cultural Expressions
189	Miha Kovač: Understanding a Book: A Few Digressions on Forms and
Meanings
201	Aleš Vaupotič: The Book and the World Wide Web
213	Anna Notaro: The Many Futures of the Book
KRITIKE
231	Miran Košuta: Escherjevska pripoved o pripovedi
235	Tanja Dominko: Interdisciplinarno umeščanje avtobiografskega
241	Matic Kocijančič: »Obči ocean« transcendentalnega idealizma
248	Gašper Jakovac: Dialogi velikanov družboslovja
POROČILA
257	B arbara Jurša: Kolokvij »Živo branje: literatura, znanost in humanistika«
264	Blaž Zabel in Maša Jazbec: Mednarodna konferenca »Retorike prostora«
271	Miloš Zelenka: Mednarodna konferenca Kulturni zemljevid nove Evrope
NEKROLOG
277	Meter Scherber: In memoriam prof. dr. Erika Greber
Primerjalna Književnost
Primerjalna književnost, letnik 35, št. 1, Ljubljana, junij 2012, UDK 82091(05)
Knjiga in ekonomija kulturnih prostorov (predgovor)
Marijan Dovic, Jernej Habjan, Marko Juvan
Literatura prek knjige, svojega glavnega novoveškega medija, povezuje kulturne prostore. Knjige niso le fizični nosilci tekstov, temveč tudi arte-fakti in simboli s svojo lastno zgodovino, pomenskimi kodi in vrednostjo. Kot takšne so skupaj s fikcijskimi svetovi literature, ki so vpisani vanje, dejavnik interaktivnega oblikovanja kulturnih identitet. Tvorijo spominski arhiv dane kulture in ji obenem odpirajo virtualna okna v svet. Zato so knjige pogoj ustvarjalnega mišljenja, prek katerega se neki kulturni prostor sploh lahko reinterpretira, razvija in preizkuša možne prihodnosti. Kulturni transfer rokopisov in knjig je od predantičnih civilizacij naprej vseskozi prečkal jezikovne, etnične, zemljepisne in državno-politične meje. Obtok knjig, njihovo sistematično zbiranje v knjižnicah, katalogi-ziranje, analiziranje, komentiranje in ustvarjalno odzivanje nanje — vse to so dejavniki, ki so krojili zgodovino idej in literature. S simbolno in tržno menjavo literarnih reprezentacij ter z njihovim presajanjem v lokalizira-ne geokulturne kode so se obnavljale tradicije posameznih etnij, narodov. Tako so se spletala in spreminjala tudi regionalna, transnacionalna in med-civilizacijska omrežja, po katerih so se širile literarne ideje, mentalni prostori, besedilne strukture ter koncepti institucij in praks. Brez ekonomije knjižnega transfera, v kateri se križata logiki simbolnega/kulturnega in tržnega kapitala, bi ne mogli govoriti ne o goethejevski svetovni književnosti ne o naši udeleženosti v njej, kakor tudi ne o mednarodnih tokovih, kakršna sta razsvetljenstvo ali modernizem. Knjiga in literatura sta torej s svojo ekonomijo posrednici kulturnih prostorov: materialno in mentalno vzpostavljata tako njihovo notranjo koherentnost, kontinuiteto kakor tudi zunanjo, transnacionalno integriranost. Zdi se, da to vlogo literatura danes še vedno uresničuje, čeprav z digitalnimi elektronskimi mediji knjiga in knjižnica temeljito spreminjata način svojega obstoja, pa tudi ekonomsko
logiko svojega družbenega delovanja.
* * *
Slovenska komparativistika in literarna veda nasploh se v zadnjih letih čedalje bolj zavedata pomena, ki ga ima za stroko sodobno raziskovanje knjige, njene zgodovine, transformacij ter ekonomskih in družbenih
Primerjalna književnost (Ljubljana) 35.1 (2012)
razsežnosti. Medij knjige se razkriva kot dejavnik, ki v marsičem določa pomensko-vrednostne in ideološke plasti literarnih besedil, njihov žanrski značaj, slogovni profil ali kulturno-prostorsko istovetnost, poleg tega pa sodi med dejavnike, ki uravnavajo literarno tradicijo in razvoj ter razmerja med avtorji in občinstvi (z vsemi posredniškimi instancami vred). Kot predmet fizičnih in mentalnih prenosov, zbiranja, obdelave in sistematiziranja pa je knjiga tudi element, ki vzpostavlja povezave med lokalnimi, nacionalnimi literaturami; prenavlja njihove repertoarje, z neprestanimi vnosi drugosti spodbuja prestrukturiranja lokalnih sestavov vednosti, kar vse je vodilo k oblikovanju obsežnih regionalnih in svetovnih sistemov literarnega obtoka. S knjigo povezana vprašanja so na Slovenskem stopila v ospredje od aprila 2010 do pomladi 2011, ko je Ljubljana kot UNESCOVA svetovna prestolnica knjige gostila na desetine prireditev. Kot svoj prispevek k strokovnim in znanstvenim srečanjem, ki so bili ob tej priložnosti posvečeni knjigi, njeni produkciji, prevajanju, življenju, kroženju, recepciji in nejasni prihodnosti, je Slovensko društvo za primerjalno književnost novembra 2011 v sodelovanju z Inštitutom za slovensko literaturo in literarne vede ZRC SAZU in Evropsko mrežo za primerjalno literarno vedo (REELC/ENCLS) priredilo v Ljubljani mednarodno konferenco z naslovom Knjiga: ekonomija kulturnih prostorov. Na podlagi prispevkov in diskusij s te konference — bila je tudi prva v nizu konferenc, ki jih je REELC/ ENCLS začela prirejati v obdobju med svojimi kongresi — je nastal tudi pričujoči tematski sklop Primerjalne književnosti. V njem natisnjeni prispevki sodelavcev Inštituta za slovensko literaturo in literarne vede ZRC SAZU sodijo med rezultate projekta »Slovenska« svetovna književnost: umeščanje svetovne književnosti v nacionalni literarni sistem (J6-3613), ki ga vodi Marko Juvan.
K sodelovanju smo pritegnili vrsto domačih in tujih specialistov, ki so razmišljali o relevantnosti zgodovine knjige in sorodnih medijev za sodobno, transnacionalno usmerjeno primerjalno literarno vedo (in njene refleksije pojma svetovne književnosti). Pri tem smo želeli v razpravah zajeti zelo širok časovni okvir (od zadnjih stoletij rokopisne dobe oziroma začetkov Gutenbergove galaksije do najnovejših bralnih tehnologij 21. stoletja) pa tudi prostorske koordinate (od Iberskega polotoka do Estonije, od Balkana in srednje Evrope do Velike Britanije); zajeti smo želeli tako velike (globalne) knjižne trge kakor majhne, izrazito specifične literarne kulture; in ne nazadnje smo želeli zajeti niz empirično podprtih raziskav zgodovine knjige obenem s kakovostnimi teoretskimi in metodološkimi premisleki. Izmed različnih možnih načinov razvrstitve prispevkov, ki so se ob tem ponujali, smo na koncu izbrali kronološko načelo: naš pregled se začenja v rokopisni dobi, končuje pa z negotovimi projekcijami, ki jih nakazuje neverjetna hitrost sprememb v prvem desetletju novega tisočletja.
Marijan Dovic, Jernej Habjan, Marko Juvan: Knjiga in ekonomija kulturnih prostorov
Marko Juvan v članku »Kulturni obtok in knjiga« uvodoma zariše konceptualno polje pričujoče tematske številke, tako da teoretsko in zgodovinsko razgrinja vezi med knjigo, literaturo, kulturo, prostorom in ekonomijo. S prispevkom »Obtok v predmoderni svetovni literaturi: zgodovinski kontekst, posredništvo in fizičnost« si César Domínguez zastavlja vprašanje o cirkulaciji rokopisov in o možnostih za razmislek o svetovni literaturi v času pred izumom tiskane knjige. Z začetki dobe tiska se ukvarja David Šporer v besedilu »Renesančno pesništvo, tisk in vloga Marina Držica«, kjer razpravlja o emancipaciji tiskanja poezije v renesančnem Dubrovniku oziroma v širšem kontekstu hrvaške renesanse. Marijana Hameršak v razpravi »Kako so pravljice postale zvrst hrvaške otroške literature?« odpira zanimivo poglavje »pozabljene« zgodovine knjig, bogate edicijske tradicije pravljic, ki se v drugi polovici 19. stoletja še niso zdele primerne za konserviranje v aparatu nacionalnega zgodovinskega spomina. Na ravno nasproten proces pokaže Dragos Jipa v razpravi »Literarni kanon v založniškem aparatu: knjižna zbirka 'Les Grands Ecrivains Français' (1887—1913)«: gre za kanoniza-cijo spisov »velikih« nacionalnih avtorjev, značilno za čas, ko smo tudi na Slovenskem dobivali prve kritične izdaje zbranih del domačih klasikov.
Jernej Habjan v prispevku »Uspešnica kot črna škatla oddaljenega branja: primer Sherlock Holmes« na primeru prve generacije detektivke izpostavi zagate Morettijevega literarnozgodovinskega »oddaljenega branja« besedil svetovne literature in njegovih razlag razvoja enega od uspešnih žanrov, medtem ko Alenka Koron k vprašanju o recepciji svetovne književnosti pristopi z analizo zasebne knjižnice slovenskega modernističnega pripovednika Lojzeta Kovačiča. Marijan Dovic v razpravi »Ekonomika in ideologije slovenskega literarnega posredništva« pregleda zgodovino slovenske (literarne) knjige od konca 18. stoletja do danes predvsem z vidika njenih najvidnejših ekonomskih in politično-ideoloških omejitev. Položaj kulturne (oziroma literarne) produkcije v dobi zadnjega cikla gospodarske globalizacije pa proučuje Maja Breznik v članku »Dvojna vloga pisatelja kot delavca in rentnika«, v katerem se posveti razdvojenemu položaju avtorja tako v globalnem kakor v lokalnem, tj. slovenskem kontekstu. Tiina Aunin v študiji »Knjiga: Predmet skupnega razumevanja medijskih sprememb« in Jola Škulj v razpravi »Zapletena igra knjig in vzajemno delovanje kulturnega transferja«, ki sicer obe izhajata iz izkušnje malih literatur (estonske in slovenske), se v luči bahtinovskih in lotmanovskih koncepcij posvečata predvsem teoretskemu razmisleku o knjižnem mediju nasploh in o njegovih prihodnjih transformacijah. Nekoliko konkretneje Alexis Weedon v besedilu »Knjiga kot dinamičen sistem za komodifikacijo idej in kulturnih praks« predlaga novo definicijo knjige, ki naj bi jo razumeli predvsem kot dragocen in učinkovit sistem za prenašanje idej in kulturnih praks.
Neizogibnost temeljite prenove koncepta knjige je tudi ena izmed rdečih niti razprav v zadnjem sklopu, ki se večinoma ukvarjajo s transformacijami knjige kot medija in s prihodnostjo branja literature oziroma branja nasploh. Miha Kovač v razpravi »Razumeti knjigo: Nekaj digresij o formah in pomenih« analizira razlike med branjem z digitalnih in analognih medijev ter skuša pokazati, kako se s premeno medija delno spreminjajo tudi pomeni, ustvarjeni prek branja. Aleš Vaupotič pa v razpravi »Knjiga in svetovni splet« obravnava, kako spletna komunikacija učinkuje na knjigo v vlogi nosilca sporočila, ter z analizo »sonetoidnih« spletnih projektov Tea Spillerja in spletne Stanfordske filozofske enciklopedije prikaže, kateri vidiki knjige so se v novih okoliščinah bistveno spremenili ali nadgradili. Sklop zaokroži razmislek Anne Notaro »Mnogotere prihodnosti knjige«, ki opozori na široko paleto sprememb knjižnega medija v novih razmerah, med njimi pa izpostavi brezžično povezljivost, ki utegne v prihodnosti odigrati pomembno vlogo pri transformacijah posredniškega sektorja in pri spreminjanju razmerij med avtorji in bralci.
* * *
Zdi se, da ima paradigmatski zasuk, v katerega smo postavljeni, razsežnosti, ki jih ta hip še ni mogoče povsem jasno ugledati in ovrednotiti. Skoraj gotovo je, da temeljite spremembe, ki jim je podvržena »knjiga« — ne zgolj kot »materialni nosilec«, temveč predvsem kot »informacijsko orodje« oziroma »dinamičen sistem« — ne bodo ostale brez posledic. Te se trenutno najbolj očitno kažejo v posredniškem sektorju (v založništvu), utegnejo pa tudi globlje prizadeti temeljne kulturne vzorce, ki so se vzpostavili v stoletjih prevlade tiskane knjige. Morebiti pod vprašajem niso le dosedanji koncepti avtorja (in s tem avtorskih pravic), bralca, posredovanja, temveč spremembe segajo v samo jedro subjektivnosti prihajajočega »digitalnega človeka«. V tem smislu humanistika, posebej pa komparativi-stika, ki je od nekdaj zavezana knjigi, knjižni kulturi in njeni refleksiji, ne more zgolj stati ob strani; zavezana je, da se do problemov opredeli, jih ustrezno premisli in vstopi v aktiven dialog s procesi, sredi katerih se je znašla. V želji, da bi bil v svetovnem razpravljanju o teh temah bolj slišen tudi glas slovenskih strokovnjakov in njihovih gostov, objavljamo razprave v tej tematski številki Primerjalne književnosti v angleškem jeziku.
The Book and the Economy of Cultural Spaces (Foreword)
Marijan Dovic, Jernej Habjan, and Marko Juvan
The book is the primary modern medium of literature, which connects cultural spaces. Books are not only physical conveyers of texts, but also artifacts and symbols with their own history, value, and semantic codes. Together with the imprinted fictional worlds of literature, they are the vehicles of an interactive development of cultural identities. Books constitute a memory archive of a given culture and are at the same time its virtual windows on the world. Therefore, books are essential for creative thinking, which enables a specific cultural space to actually reinterpret, evolve, and test possible futures. Since the times of prehistoric civilizations, the cultural transfer of manuscripts and books has constantly crossed linguistic, ethnic, geographical, national, and political borders. Book circulation, systematic library collecting and catalogues, analyses, comments, and creative reflections all shaped the history of ideas and literature. The symbolic and market exchange of literary representations and their transfer into localized geo-cultural codes revived the traditions of individual peoples and nations. Thus ever-changing regional, transnational, and inter-civilization networks were established, which allowed the expansion of literary ideas, mental spaces, textual structures, and institutional concepts and practices. The economy of book transfer, in which the logic of symbolic/cultural capital and that of market capital meet, enables discussion of concepts such as Goethe's world literature or international movements such as the Enlightenment and Modernism. Because of their economy, the book and literature are agents of cultural spaces; they materially and mentally create internal coherence and continuity as well as external, transnational integration. It appears that even today this role of literature is still being fulfilled as the book and library experience profound changes to their forms of existence and the economic logic of their social function due to the advent of digital and electronic media.
* * *
In recent years, Slovenian comparative literature and literary studies in general have been increasingly aware of the significance of modern book research: the study of its history, transformations, and economic and social dimensions. The book medium often emerges as a determining agent
Primerjalna književnost (Ljubljana) 35.1 (2012)
of the meaning, value, and ideological layers of literary texts. It modifies genre characteristics, style profiles, or cultural and spatial authenticity, and is one of those factors that balance the literary tradition and the development and relations between authors and audiences (together with the corresponding mediatory institutions). As a subject of collection, processing, systematization, and physical and mental transfers, the book is also an element that has established connections between local or national literatures; it has revived their repertoires and encouraged reconstruction of local value systems with constant inputs of otherness. All this has led to the development of extensive regional and world systems of literary circulation.
In Slovenia, book issues occupied the foreground from April 2010 to spring 2011, when Ljubljana became UNESCO's World Book Capital and hosted numerous events. A contribution to professional and academic meetings celebrating the book and its translation, production, existence, circulation, reception, and unclear future was also made by the Slovenian Comparative Literature Association, the Institute of Slovenian Literature and Literary Studies, and the European Network for Comparative Literary Studies (REELC/ENCLS). The international conference took place in November 2011 in Ljubljana and was called The Book: An Economy of Cultural Spaces. This conference was the first in the series of events REELC/ENCLS held in the period between its congresses. The articles and discussions from the conference are included in this thematic section of Primerjalna knji^evnost. The featured articles of the members of the Institute of Slovenian Literature and Literary Studies are results of a project called The ".Slovenian" World Literature: Locating World Literature in a National Literary System, led by Marko Juvan.
Many Slovenian and foreign experts have participated in the project and submitted articles on the relevance of the history of books and related media to modern, transnational comparative literature studies (and their reflections on the concept of "world literature"). The ambition was to cover a relatively wide timeframe (from the last centuries of the manuscript era and the beginnings of the Gutenberg epoch to the modern reading technologies of the twenty-first century) and a large territorial area (from the Iberian Peninsula to Estonia and from the Balkans and Central Europe to Great Britain); and to feature large (global) book markets as well as small, distinctly specific literary cultures; last but not least, our wish was to include empirically supported research on book history as well as quality theoretical and methodological considerations. The articles submitted suggested a variety of possible classifications, but in the end the chronological principle was chosen: this collection of articles begins with
the age of manuscripts and ends with uncertain projections indicated by the incredible pace of changes in the first decade of the third millennium.
In the introduction to his article "Cultural Circulation and the Book: Literature, Knowledge, Space, and Economy (An Introduction)" Marko Juvan outlines the conceptual field of the thematic issue and theoretically and historically reveals the ties between the book, literature, culture, space, and economy. César Domínguez's article "Circulation in Premodern World Literature: Historical Context, Agency, and Physicality" poses questions about the circulation of manuscripts and about the existence of world literature before the invention of the printing press. The beginnings of the printing revolution are the main topic of David Sporer's text, titled "Renaissance Poetry in Print and the Role of Marin Drzic." He discusses the flowering of poetry printing in Dubrovnik during the Renaissance and examines the wider context of the Renaissance in Croatia. Marijana Hamersak writes about an interesting topic of "forgotten" book history. "How Did Fairytales Become a Genre of Croatian Children's Literature?" in an article about the rich publishing tradition of fairytales, which were not regarded as suitable for preservation in the apparatus of national historical memory in the second half of the nineteenth century. An exactly reverse process is described in Dragos Jipa's discussion "The Literary Canon in the Publishing Apparatus: The Book Series 'Les Grands Ecrivains Français' (1887—1913)." The discussion focuses on the canonization of texts written by "important" national authors. This process is characteristic of the time when the first critical editions of collected works appeared, both in Slovenia and abroad.
In his text "The Bestseller as the Black Box of Distant Reading: The Case of Sherlock Holmes," Jernej Habjan draws an example from the first generation of detective stories and identifies the problems of Moretti's literary-historical "distant reading" of texts from world literature. In addition to this, he comments on Moretti's explanations of the genre's successful development. Alenka Koron raises the issue of world literature reception and provides an analysis of a private library owned by the Slovene modernist Lojze Kovacic. Marijan Dovic traces the history of the Slovenian (literary) book from the end of the eighteenth century to today. In his discussion "Economics and Ideologies of Slovenian Literary Mediation," the main emphasis is placed on the book's most evident economic, political, and ideological constraints. Maja Breznik's topic of interest is the situation of cultural (or literary) production during the last cycle of economic globalization. She describes this in her article "The Double Role of the Writer as Worker and Rentier," in which she focuses on the author's position between the global and the local, Slovenian context.
Tiina Aunin's study "The Book as an Object of the Shared Understanding of Media Changes" and Jola Skulj's discussion "A Challenging Game of Books and the Free Interplay of Cultural Transfer," both setting off with the experience of a small literature (Estonian and Slovenian respectively), mostly commit to theoretical reflections on the book medium in general and its future transformations in the light of Bakhtin's and Lotman's perspectives. Alexis Weedon's article "The Book as a Dynamic System for the Commodification of Ideas and Cultural Expressions" suggests a new definition of the book; it should be understood as a precious and effective system for transferring ideas and cultural practices.
The inevitability of the redefinition of the book concept is one of the main themes of the discussion in the last few articles. They mostly discuss the transformations of the book as a medium and the future of reading literature—and of reading in general. In "Understanding a Book: A Few Digressions on Forms and Meanings," Miha Kovač analyses the differences between reading digital and print media and discusses how the change of medium to some extent changes the meanings that emerge during the reading process. Aleš Vaupotič's article "The Book and the World Wide Web" discusses the effects of internet communication on the book and its role of the message deliverer. His analysis of Teo Spiller's "son-netoid" web projects and online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy shows which aspects of the book have evolved or changed considerably under new circumstances. The concluding article was written by Anna Notaro. In "The Many Futures of the Book" she focuses on the numerous changes to the book medium in the new era. Special emphasis is placed on wireless connectivity, which may yet play an important role in the transformational process of the mediatory sector and the transformation of relations between authors and readers.
* * *
It seems that the paradigmatic shift currently underway is so vast in scope that it is impossible to clearly comprehend and evaluate the situation at present. The book is not only a "material conveyer," but also an "information instrument" or a "dynamic system." It is almost certain that these influential and profound changes will have an impact on "the book." At the moment, these changes are most evident in the mediatory sector (and publishing), but they may also significantly affect the basic cultural patterns established through the centuries of print domination. Perhaps not only the recent concepts of author (and authorial rights), reader, and mediation have been brought into question; the changes may reach the
very core of the future subjectivity of "digital" humankind. In this sense, humanist studies, especially comparative literary studies, which has always been attached to the book, book culture, and its reflection, cannot just stand by; it is obliged to confront these problems, consider them, and enter into an active dialogue with the processes taking place at the present time. With the intention of enabling Slovene experts and their guests to participate in global discussions on these topics, their articles are presented in the current issue of Primerjalna knji%emost in English.