Sandra Abels
Case description
For large parts of the 20th century, Dortmund had a major reputation for three things: steel, beer, and footie. Today, the local steel and beer production are mere spectres of their former selves whereas the BVB persevered as one landmark enterprise in Dortmund. The Hoesch-Museum, dedicated to the now defunct former steel and mining conglomerate Hoesch with up to 60,000 people employed in its hey-day, knows a lot about the glory and ruination of the company and its impact on Dortmund’s cityscape. At the museum, it is considered common knowledge that Hoesch had a massive influence in shaping Dortmund's urban infrastructure, politics and society over the course of its lifetime. The working hypothesis in this case is that Hoesch – just as well as beer and football – contributed heavily to a very specific, situated atmosphere in the city: a feeling, that, somewhat unsatisfyingly, can be described as a pragmatic, gruff, but unwavering nonchalance despite. The notion that – at least at Hoesch – folks related and worked together despite different origins, religions, political affiliations and preferences, etc. seems to ooze from the shelves in the museum’s exhibition and depot rooms, and traces of it are still palpable in Dortmund’s daily nowadays life. But how exactly, did this feeling emerge?
The local partners in the case, Hoesch-Museum Dortmund, Westfalen-Kolleg-Dortmund and BVB-Gründerkirche, are trying to gain a better understanding of the processes and practices involved in this. As mostly non-STS people, we hope for folks from the STS realm to join our ponderings. We invite participants to a tentative collaborative exploration based on locally situated empirical material. The case can be understood as a small pre-study to gauge the potential of mobilising ideas from stories about Dortmund’s past for futures that we are hoping to facilitate.
Our focus with this is on democratising practices. During the day at the conference in Dortmund, we present stories from the past and the present, with the latter prospectively mainly coming from the vantage point of a younger post-Hoesch generation at the Westfalen-Kolleg who are experiencing Dortmund now. The contribution of BVB-Gründerkirche to this case consists of stories about the early days of the BVB and the contribution of soccer, faith, and religion to the specific Dortmund feeling. We expect the different empirical contributions to highlight the interpretative flexibility of specific local urban infrastructures (cf. Pinch & Bijker 1984). By participating in this case, you are helping to critically engage with our ideas, to sort things out and to derive new ideas from the material. Overarching questions we are especially interested in are:
- Which democratising practices can be pinpointed in the empirical material?
- How can such practices from the past be (re-)mobilised in the very different local context we are living in nowadays?
- In institutions like public schools and museums that hold a mandate to facilitate and uphold democracy, how can we actively contribute to strengthening democratic interactions between individuals?
Supposed outcome at the conference
Vaguely inspired by Ignacio Farías’ and Tomás Criado’s Stories about Urban STS (2024), the preliminary goal for the day is to develop a rudimentary map that displays the multiplicities of stories about living in Dortmund from past and present – meaning: a prototype grounded in both empirical evidence and theory. Sharing diverse stories and the situated knowledges expressed through them (Haraway 1988) can be seen as a democratising practice in itself. It circumvents the linearity of traditional descriptions of history that is often found in traditional museums (Hooper-Greenhill 2004; Azoulay 2019) and thus offers opportunities for more equal knowledge productions.
We are confident that the map produced during the day will be of future use both at the Hoesch-Museum and the Westfalen-Kolleg. Ideally, we imagine the prototype as a starting point to further an active engagement within a wide variety of local city dwellers, e.g. in the shape of an OpenStreetMap (OSM) project. (We are also tentatively playing with ideas to turn the case into a collaborative university seminar at some point in the future.) Learning from and with each other might contribute to tell urban stories about Dortmund differently and thereby shape futures of Dortmund otherwise – hopefully in more diverse, democratic ways (cf. Farías & Criado 2024).
Modes of participation in the case
Participants in this case are invited to contribute to think with us and the local empirical material, to add thoughts from their own research, and to strengthen the theoretical foundation of this exploration. Participation could take the form of short (~ 5 min.) inputs from your own research elsewhere, theoretical insights that fit (or fight!) our ponderings, assumptions, and conclusions, or any active involvement in the deliberation. Other ways to participate are full-heartedly welcome, please explain in the form what you have in mind. If anyone has used OSM for research projects, we’d be very happy to have your expertise!
Tentative timeline for the case
Participants will receive a dossier to introduce the case and to share some relevant material prior to the conference. If participants are interested, we can arrange for an introductory zoom meeting to familiarise a bit with the case (and each other) before the conference.
Preliminary schedule for the day (details are subject to change)
Morning: Meet-up at Hoesch-Museum Dortmund. Presentation of empirical material re: the research questions, including
- visit of the museum’s front- and backstage, looking into the nitty-gritty details of the empirical specifics, with (mostly short) inputs re: selected topics (yet to be determined)
- a walk through the adjacent Nordstadt to take in the current atmosphere, with shared stories from past, present and potential futures
Noon: extended lunch break, including some downtime to roam around the city centre for a bit; transfer to Westfalen-Kolleg
Afternoon: discussion and documentation at Westfalen-Kolleg Dortmund
- sorting things out at Westfalen-Kolleg Dortmund with input from students
- producing a visual prototype for the salon on Friday morning
(Transfer back to Bochum around approx. 17-17.30 hrs.)
Case restrictions
Number of Participants: 6-15 conference participants (+ local case partners joining on-site)
Case language: German as the empirical evidence at the museum come almost exclusively in German
Physical limitations with the case: Many spaces at the backstage of the museum are only accessible via steep sets of stairs. The case involves some walking around in an urban environment at a slow to moderate pace.
Travel time: Bochum HBF - Dortmund HBF: roughly 10 min. with regional trains, 20 min. with S-Bahn. The main anchor points for this case, U Westfalenhütte (morning) and U Unionstraße (afternoon), are located along the U44. Depending on the time of the day, the (longer) trip to Westfalenhütte takes roughly 15 min.
Costs: Travel costs for regional public transport between Bochum – Dortmund, with some trips in Dortmund during the day. In the morning and afternoon, some food and beverages will be provided free of charge (no lunch, though).
Affiliation of the primary case organiser
Sandra Abels is a student at Ruhr-University Bochum, living in Dortmund, and volunteering with the Hoesch-Museum Dortmund. She is currently working on her master’s thesis about the knowledge production by way of the Hoesch-Museum’s digital database. She is supported by various people from the local case partners in the organisation of the case.
Local case partners
- Hoesch-Museum Dortmund, an industry and social history museum dedicated to the now defunct major steel and mining conglomerate known as Hoesch
- Westfalen-Kolleg Dortmund, a public school that offers A-level education for adults, located at the former administrative buildings of Dortmunder Union-Brauerei
- BVB-Gründerkirche, a project located at the historical place where the BVB Dortmund sprang to life in 1909 that offers a space for diversity and engagement following the motto Glaube. Liebe. Fußball. (= Faith. Love. Soccer.)
References
Azoulay, A. A. (2019). Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism. Verso.
Farías. I. & Criado, T. (2024). Cities: stories of urban STS. In U. Felt & A. Irwin (Hrsg.), Elgar Encyclopedia of Science and Technology Studies (pp. 532–542). Edward Elgar Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781800377998.ch55
Haraway, D. (1988). Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective. Feminist Studies, 14(3), 575-599. https://doi.org/10.2307/3178066
Hooper-Greenhill, E. (2004). Museums and the Shaping of Knowledge. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203415825
Pinch, T. J. & Bijker, W. E. (1984). The Social Construction of Facts and Artefacts: or How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology might Benefit Each Other. Social studies of science, 14(3), 399–441. https://doi.org/10.1177/030631284014003004