ABSTRACT
Circulation is not a new phenomenon – especially in the domain of science and knowledge. One would be hard pressed to think of a static and closed moment of knowledge production. Instead, exchange and circulation have always been constitutive of knowledge making and thus represent ‘both a fact of life and a usefully enabling condition of intellectual activity’ (Said 1983: 226). It is the use of the circulation terminology that is recent, particularly with regard to South-North circulation of knowledge. This chapter attempts to conceptualize circulation of knowledge; in other words, to convey the overarching concept of this edited collection. I shall thus start with a brief historical overview over earlier frameworks for thinking about the circulation of ideas in the (social) sciences prior to the introduction of this new concept, focusing mainly on international and South-North circulation in accordance with the orientation of this edited collection.
Import-Export? The Diffusionist Model under Scrutiny
