Political Control of Social Integration and Rural Social Sciences 1935-1960. Research into Agricultural Economics and Agricultural Sociology in the Context of National Socialist Spatial Planning, Policy Making and Social Integration in the Former Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Carsten Klingemann
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2011 to 2015
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 192381044

Given global demographic trends and the improvement in living standards for many people in the newly industrialised countries, growing importance is given to the manner of usage and ensuring protection for the natural landscape, urban areas and industrial sites. This also applies to land used for agricultural production. Such changes in use with their spatial impact on the land invariably influence the social structures of the locality. The consequences of current spatial planning for economic and social policy and the options of political intervention in these processes thus become highly topical issues. This applies not least at a global level to the growing problem of the integration of 'displaced' persons (refugees) from the agricultural sector. This issue was already examined by empirical social science for the purpose of policy making during the 1940s/1950s in the context of German policy relating to spatial planning, integration and refugees - not least with the objective of ensuring their social integration. For this reason the history of agrarian spatial planning in Germany has socio-political relevance at the current time. Spatial scientists, regional and town planners who believed they could implement social policy in the form of spatial planning worked in Germany from the 1920s. They also continued their activities as advisors in terms of policy making during the era of National Socialism and in the Federal Republic of Germany. After 1945 they contributed to modernisation policy to a certain extent. This is true for example of the influence they exerted on the integration of refugees or the creation of infrastructure. However, when looking back at developments under the Nazi era, it should be considered whether the previous integration model - i.e. the so-called 'achievement community' (Leistungs-Volksgemeinschaft) of Nazism based on the exclusion of Jews, aliens and German minorities (the disabled, disadvantaged, social misfits, etc) - initially continued to have an effect on regional planners in the Federal Republic of Germany, and if so, to what extent. The study project examines in detail the interaction between science and policy in relation to rural social sciences, research into regional planning and the situation of refugees. It takes into consideration documents from archives and the latest literature. The attempt is made here to clarify whether there was one or more thought collectives made up of rural regional planners using the model of the science theorist Ludwik Fleck and more recent approaches with reference to the relationship between science and policy in the framework of the history of science (M. Ash, P. Weingart, M. Szöllösi-Janze, U. Geuter).

• DFG Programme: Research Grants