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Introduction: The necessity of a new understanding of responsibility for modern society

The aim of this publication is to promote the interdisciplinary discussion of conditions, mechanisms and challenges of the attribution of responsibility under the condition of trust in systems, instead of trust in individual people . Traditionally, the concept of responsibility is understood in an individualized and frequently moral sense . In contrast to that, our starting hypothesis is that modern society is characterized by (potentially) critical constellations, in which the attribution of responsibility to individual people or organizations is not undisputedly possible . This holds for phenomena from the realm of technology, but is also true regarding social developments such as the latest financial crisis . This publication brings the perspectives of Politicaland Management-Studies together with the perspective of Scienceand TechnologyStudies as well as sociological, judicial and pedagogic viewpoints to scrutinize precarious attribution of responsibility as a phenomenon of the modern, functionally differentiated society: What new mechanisms and ways of attribution of responsibility evolve when a default in knowledge, systems or things cannot unequivocally be attributed to the mistake of an individual person? What significance do people have, if they are no longer the undisputed addresses of responsibility? And how does politics deal with the challenge to be of being held increasingly responsible for failed expectations?