Nach nunmehr eineinhalb Jahren erscheint es uns als inhaltlich Verantwortlichen für das E-Journal sinnvoll, eine Bilanz der bislang veröffentlichten Beiträge zu ziehen. Die Vielfalt und Qualität der uns erreichenden und nach Peer Review veröffentlichten Beiträge bestärkt uns in der Ansicht, grundsätzlich den richtigen Weg zu verfolgen. Bei der Gründung des E-Journals im Sommer 2009 war nicht absehbar, ob und wie die diskutierende virtuelle Community auf einen so offenstehenden Begriff wie ‚Spaces‘ in Verbindung mit dem Hinweis auf sozialkonstruktivistische erkenntnisleitende Interessen reagieren würde. Uns hat die Breite der eingehenden Beiträge überrascht. Sie reichen von konkreten historischen Analysen über Fallstudien zu ‚Räumen‘ bis zu theoretischen Überlegungen und umfassen vom Tagungsbericht über den Nachruf, vom Essay bis zum wissenschaftlichen Aufsatz ganz unterschiedliche Textformate …

Some remarks on Wittgenstein’s „Philosophical Investigations“, paragraph 153: „We are trying to get hold of the mental process of understanding which seems to be hidden behind those coarser and therefore more readily visible accompa-niments. But we do not succeed.“

It will be demonstrated on the basis of deregulation of university admission in Germany that neoliberal inspired reforms can show characteristics of an ideology – if “ideology” is understood as the willingness to ignore historical experience, scientific results, expert opinions and common sense based on political and economic fundamental convictions. This even holds true for the universities’ conduct. It will also be questioned if random student admission could be a deliberate part of social engineering of admission procedures even only as a symbolic act of acknowledging limits in the rational administration of educational biographies and in the vindicatory policies of selection procedures.

The majority of the workforce in the developed world consists of knowledge workers who are confronted with computers in between them. The problem of degradation of the knowledge worker is briefly reviewed, before focus is given to the attention economy as a relevant context for the issue of degradation. The notion ‘atten-tion space’ is introduced and as part of the attention space the ‘attentional commons’ is identified. Based on economic analysis, it is derived that the attentional commons shows properties which are typical for the rise of the so called ‘tragedy of the commons’. The degradation of the knowledge worker is identified as the actual tragedy of the attentional commons. Potential avenues leading to a solution of the tragedy in form of mar-ket-, norms- and organization-based approaches are discussed.

This paper describes Migratory Homes, two collaborative projects that investigate the notion of home/land and belonging in conditions of displacement. The fundamental question that Migratory Homes asks is “how can the disparate identities that constitute mixed societies collectively and equally participate in the creation of a common ‘home/land’ that would be co-designed, co-produced, and co-owned”? Through iterative engagements with conditions of everyday materiality, and by activating processes of co-design as research, Migratory Homes attempt to prototype conditions for social change.

The English geographer Sir Halford Mackinder ended his famous 1904 article, „The Geographical Pivot of History,“ with a disturbing reference to China. He posited that the Chinese, should they expand their power well beyond their borders, „might constitute the yellow peril to the world’s freedom.“ Leaving aside the sentiment’s racism, which was common for the era, nearly a hundred years ago Mackinder’s statement gives us a surprising view of enormous political actuality in geopolitics, which was denied for a couple of decades in Western Europe, especially in Germany.