Work with the Self. Professional Training and "Self-Improvement" in the second half of 20th century

• Applicant: Dr. Franziska Rehlinghaus
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2015 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 277966107

The research project will investigate the development of adult vocational trainings in West German history in the second half of the 20th century for reconstructing discourses and practices dealing with ideas of the 'ideal employee'. The project concentrates on measurements which should change the social and personal behavior and character of working individuals. The advanced training is seen as a huge experimental field for the modification of human beings in which practices of optimization has been demanded, taught and learnt. The project looks on the implementation and, in doing so, on the relevance of the modern discourse about self-improvement in working life. It will identify phases of training measurements and therefore reconstructs on the one side the negotiations between employers, employees and educational service providers and on the other side influencing factors like the business culture, contemporary theoretical models of the 'ideal employee' and political, social and economic conditions. As a result the project might explain the development of a society in which the ongoing work on the self was understood and promoted as an attractive offer, as a duty and a central value. The history of further training is embedded in a cultural history of labour and consulting and makes a central contribution to the historical construction of the subject in the second half of the 20th century. Thereby the project takes a stand on the governmentality studies which are debating on the formation of human beings between empowerment and pressure.Central sources are archival documents about the organisation, the elaboration and the practice of further training in German companies and of professional service providers, which offered courses since the 1950s. Additionally the project analyses personal documents like diaries of individuals who took part in further trainings and reflected about working conditions, carrier plans, ideas of a good life and fears of failure. These documents were completed by interviews with persons who took part in training programs for many years as providers or participants. The sources will be analysed in a praxeological perspective. The results of the projects should be publicated in a monography and in a number of journal articles.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants