Der Transfer von sozialwissenschaftlichem Wissen als Forschungsgegenstand

Abstract

Requirements of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research for the newly-founded Research Institute for Social Cohesion (RISC) comprise the study of social cohesion, its preconditions, risks and chances for further development. One of the basic missions is to engage in a participatory, public form of science, which seeks to transfer and evaluate knowledge in both directions, from science to society and from society back to science. On one hand, there are high expectations regarding such a collaborative transfer of social science findings into the political and public spheres. On the other, it remains uncertain whether such transfer could actually live up to these expectations, given the complexity within social science itself and the prevailing conditions in the spheres of science, politics and the public. In this article we shall sketch out various assumptions as well as the multifaceted scientific, political and public predispositions for such an intensified transfer of social science knowledge. Hence, we are calling for the (re-)activation of an analytically-oriented and self-reflective kind of social science transfer research.