Knowledge and Practices of Job Application as a Cultural Technique in the 19th Century

• Applicant: Dr. Timo Luks
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2018 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 397435816

The research project analyses the formation of knowledge and practices of job application in the 19th century. These will be addressed as a basic cultural technique of modern societies revolving around centred on the labour market and the necessity to maintain a living by wage labour, dependent personal services, and so on. As a cultural technique knowledge and practices of job application take part in a particular mode of subjectification that is closely tied to modern anthropologies of work. The research focuses on strategies of different social groups in terms of coping with the conditions of a changing labour market and a shift of traditional occupational structures by learning how to identify job opportunities and how to (successfully) apply for jobs. From the perspective of Social and Economic History, these conditions of the 19th century labour market and occupational structure can be characterised by referring to the concept of precarity. The main objective is to analyse how individuals handled the fact of, often necessary or even forced, changes in employment and occupations by adopting a new cultural technique: the job application.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants