Editors’ Letter

This issue of Public Culture focuses on the problem of translation, albeit not the conventional variety. The essays we feature here address the translation of numbers into meaning, of theories and concepts developed in particular sites (from nations to disciplines) into ways of thinking and doing research in others, of scientific facts into clinical applications, of intellectual innovations into commercial properties. The interviews, with James Siegel and Nikolas Rose, explore the career trajectories of scholars who have brokered translations and conversations across a wide range of fields. The photo-essay, by Greg Stimac, blends mundane details and exalted elements of the American landscape, conveying the idiosyncratic perspective of a hitchhiker and train traveler who roams the country to find strangely beautiful images and scenes.

We begin with an essay by Howard S. Becker, who asks the simple but tantalizingly difficult question, How much is enough? Becker begins with questions about preparing...