ATT GÅ UT med sin hund är inte bara att röra på benen. Det innebär också att öppna sig och genomströmmas av den omgivande världen; att sätta igång stärkande processer i ben, lungor, hjärta och hjärna. Samt, inte minst, att skapa och fördjupa en vänskap med den sällskapande varelsen.

I denna bok skildras utegåendets mekanismer, ägaransvar i glädje och sorg, lärorika hundhemligheter och den livsberikande kärlek som kan uppstå mellan hund och människa.

Kulturforskaren Johan Fornäs skildrar i Jag går ut med min hund den gränsöverskridande kärleken mellan djur och människa. Med schipperkehunden Kim som exempel och samtalspartner ger han inblickar i såväl gåendets filosofi som arternas gemenskap.

To identify a set of defining traits and goals of the cultural studies field is the task of this intervention. It begins by investigating how leading actors in this field today define it: the Association for Cultural Studies and the journals Cultural Studies, the European Journal of Cultural Studies, the International Journal of Cultural Studies, and the Inter- Asian Cultural Studies. Three main tropes are identified: diversity, contextualisation and critique. Each of them have partly succeeded but other aims remain unfulfilled. Two central tasks are formulated. First, cultural studies needs a reinforced critical reflexivity to explain what it is and why it is needed as a driving force for interactive diversity, contextualising meaning making and communicative critique. Second, the field needs to be on high alert, stepping forward and responding fast and loud to the current totalitarian threats against sustainable and resilient academic knowledge production.

To identify a set of defining traits and goals of the cultural studies field is the task of this intervention. It begins by investigating how leading actors in this field today define it: the Association for Cultural Studies and the journals Cultural Studies, the European Journal of Cultural Studies, the International Journal of Cultural Studies, and Inter-Asian Cultural Studies. Three main tropes are identified: diversity, contextualization and critique. Each of them has partly succeeded but other aims remain unfulfilled. Two central tasks are formulated. First, cultural studies needs a reinforced critical reflexivity to explain what it is and why it is needed as a driving force for interactive diversity, contextualizing meaning making and communicative critique. Second, the field needs to be on high alert, stepping forward and responding fast and loud to the current totalitarian threats against sustainable and resilient academic knowledge production. © The Author(s) 2020.

Hermeneutics is a philosophical reflection on interpretation: how people make meaning, for instance, when reading books or looking at pictures. This chapter first defines interpretation, explains why it is central to any reimagining of communication, and clarifies its relations to neighboring concepts like meaning, culture and communication. Then follows a discussion of key assumptions and themes of interpretation theory, including how to locate and reconstruct meaning. Third, a brief historical overview over different hermeneutic contributions traces the transition from the Romanticist tradition with Schleiermacher and Dilthey through Heidegger and Gadamer to the critical hermeneutics of Paul Ricoeur, which is particularly suitable for a theory of communication in the contemporary media age. The hermeneutic circle, expanded to a spiral of interpretation, is then presented as a model of how meaning is made – but also of how it is studied. The chapter concludes with some words on the limits of interpretation, responding to antihermeneutic challenges from posthumanists and new materialists.