Deindustrialized Work in the Post-industrial City (DEWOPOCIT): Class as Culture under Urban Transformation

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Talja Blokland
• Subject Area: Sociological Theory ; Empirical Social Research
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 531535075

What happens to class when industrial work disappears? With the transformation of work and the disappearance of industrial labour, how is working class socially and culturally lived? This project investigates the implications of changes in former industrial landscapes for working class identities and everyday access to resources. We ask 1) how white working class men and women position themselves in deindustrialised working-class neighbourhoods; 2) in what ways such positionings differ in post-industrial urban landscapes with and without creative city development, 3) how post-socialism and unification affect these processes. In other words, how do processes of deindustrialization of labour and post-industrialization of landscapes influence the positions of a white working-class at the intersection of class and gender in terms of social, cultural and symbolic capital? Comparing landscapes with creative city development with those without this investment enables us to see how changes in industrial landscapes and their related infrastructures affect people’s local practices and the ways in which resources can be used to get things done. The comparison of post-socialist and post-socialist unified developments enables us to study the different effects of varieties of deindustrialization of work and post-industrialisation of landscapes on class as culture. We study this empirically through cases in Czech and German metropoles (Prague, Berlin). Our theoretical framework critically engages with the (un)matching features of habitus and habitat, reflected in Bourdieu’s idea of spatial profit. The methodological design contains a survey to assess how positions of deindustrialized working class residents in selected neighbourhoods variously affected by post-industrialisation of landscapes in turn influence resource access through social and cultural capital. Focus groups with white working-class men and women deepen our understanding of the survey results. We hypothesize that the current German public discussion on the ‘East’ underestimates the relevance of class as culture for identities and for access to resources. Our comparative project proposes to bring together the experience of East German whites with gendered experiences of intense ruptures of industrial work and urban space as they occurred in other European cities with political transformation, like Prague in the Czech Republic, yet with an additional layer of framing that draws on the experience and narrative of unification.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants