Project Details
Projekt
Making Something of Oneself: Resources, Social Mobility, and Biography in Self-Forming Processes in the 19th and 20th Centuries (TP 4)
Applicant
Professorin Dr. Reinhild Kreis
Subject Area
Modern and Contemporary History
Term
since 2026
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 539990504
The idea of "making something of oneself" enabled new forms of "self-forming" from the second half of the 19th century onward and was perceived as a promise, a demand, and a threat all at the same time. Amid the economic and political transformations of the time, conceptions of social order and individual life courses - in other words, of structure and agency - underwent profound changes. Taking this new perspective on human life paths as a starting point, the project investigates the concrete forms, practices, and dimensions of this new and influential nexus for thought and action in a long-term perspective from the 1850s to the 1990s. Our goal is to explore the notion of "making something of oneself" as a central paradigm of modern societies in the 19th and 20th centuries, thereby opening up fresh perspectives on the history of social mobility in connection with self-forming. The idea of making something of oneself was accompanied by new and changing forms of self-reflection and self-presentation through which the demands and outcomes of self-formation processes became perceptible and thus interpretable both to the self and to others. The project examines the conditions, prerequisites, and consequences of the self’s makeability, with particular attention to gender, generation and class. The focus is on media constellations involved in the shaping and mediation of self-formations. They are both necessary elements and results of the process and manifest themselves textually, visually, materially, and physically. Firstly, this approach sheds light on the tension between active self-formation and societal negotiations with regard to goals, dimensions, and outcomes of making something of oneself. Secondly, it raises questions about the media conditions under which the self is constituted. Thirdly, it explores which (material and immaterial) resources were considered beneficial to self-formation under the premise of a potentially makeable life course. The project addresses these questions on different levels. The PI examines novel ideas of life paths, opportunities, and resources for self-formation as driving forces of social transformation. Study 1 (postdoctoral) investigates the newly emerging topos of "chance" between the 1860s and 1960s to analyze the changing scopes and preferences in the shaping of biographies. Study 2 (doctoral project) focuses on "self-made" men and women in the Federal Republic of Germany, thus examining a specific group and the possibilities and limitations they faced in their efforts to "make something of themselves."
DFG Programme
Research Units
