meknes – FinderApp   

The meknes FinderApp is a demo (beta version) of a dynamic thesaurus of commentaries and references regarding the thematic complex of „hospitable economics“. The thesaurus has been developed within the meknes-research project and can be seen as an anthology of literary sources of different languages that help in various ways to further an understanding of a dimension of economics which remains either inaccessible or forgotten in the established standard scientific approaches. Hence, the mining tool is meant to support the exploration and preservation of those sources in order to disclose and unfold an economic knowledge in a newly defined sense, which is provisionally referred to through the word „hospitable“. At the same time, this experimental tool explores new ways in which digital technologies are able to make a unique contribution to the Liberal Arts and the Humanities in general.

Hospitable Economics

The concept of hospitable economics serves as a general guideline and at the same time it poses a fundamental question. It is a guideline in order to lay open a richness of sense within economical thinking which lies yet dormant and inert. It constitutes a questionability, since the disclosure and articulation of the dimension of richness and manifoldness requries a separation from the established scientific economic discourse which does not only dominate economic sciences but also the humanities.

Therefore, hospitable economics initiates a transformation of knowledge: some forms of knowledge and understanding which are not considered economic, solely because they are excluded from the conceptual framework and the methodological perspective of economic science are to be unfolded in such a way that it brings with it a transformation of the very concept of economics itself. The outlining of this yet unknown economy understands itself as a knowledge of the wholeness of sense relations of human existence (oikos) as it is granted and alloted to human dwelling on earth (nomos). It does not refer to modern methodical economic science in terms of orientation and it does not provide it with a theoretical basis or any sort of functional normativity. The free unfolding, safeguarding and articulation of this dimension is primarily the matter of poetry, philosophy, and art.

Funding

The project has been funded by the Free University of Bolzano over a period of two years and with overall expenses on personnel equivalent to a five month full employment of a scientific collaborator (according to the rates of the German Research Foundation, DFG-Personalmittelsätze 2017).

Copyright

All contents are property of the meknes Authors if not indicated otherwise.