PhD project
Dissertation project conducted within the framework of the DFG Priority Programme Digitalisierung der Arbeitswelten and a cooperative research project between Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, the ISF Munich, and the ZZF Potsdam entitled Politics of Inscription in der digitalen Transformation: Leistungssteuerung an der Schnittstelle von betrieblichen Strategien und Technikdesign.
This project examines fundamental changes in industrial work and production from the 1960s to the end of the twentieth century. It focuses on transformations of work processes in companies of the West German chemical industry against the backdrop of technological developments such as automation and digitalization, as well as the growing significance of environmental concerns.
Labour is conceptualized as a mode of social interaction with nature, whose concrete forms emerge from social negotiations under historically specific technological and material conditions. Methodologically, the project draws on an environmentally extended variant of historical plant-level analysis. Its sources include, on the one hand, interviews and additional research data from contemporary labour and industrial sociology studies, and, on the other hand, archival materials from the respective companies.
