The Use of Resources and Economic Calculation: Perception, Structures of Decisions and Practices of Adaption in the German Chemical Industry between 1860 and 1960 (B01)

• Subject Area: Economic and Social History
• Term: from 2015 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 230856760

The project traces the question of how the health and cosmetic industries during the 20th century managed to transform the weakness of the body into economic calculation. The phenomenon of “ageing” is used to analyze the relationship between societal discourses of weakness and economic opportunities. One goal is to understand how enterprises of the pharma industry react to real or supposed demand with innovations, which require a large amount of resources. How are they related to an environment in which reduced efficiency and physical decline and the loss of youthfulness and age are constructed as “weakness”. It continues the analysis of economic calculation and provides new insights by looking into new industries.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 1095: Discourses of Weakness and Resource Regimes
• Applicant Institution: Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main
• Project Head: Professor Dr. Werner Plumpe