ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book is both a new field of activity and a prospective new agency needed to house it. It has developed out of some 40 years of research and teaching at universities in Africa and Europe, Asia and the Americas. Rediscovering business, economics and the role of the university along the local-global way, Foucault's genealogy has come home to roost, institutionally and agentially, and philosophically and structurally. The Islamic Renaissance was indeed a specific and societal case in point. Many Westerners now join in such practices, both at home and abroad. Shorn of its political connotations in its later incarnation, this ideal inspired new practices of humanistic discourse amongst men and women of letters. The story of how Germany led the world into the age of modern scholarship therefore counts, among the most stunning reversals in the history of knowledge.
