Research

The project is divided into four sub-areas, the first two of which describe the discourse and literary history of bureaucratic operationality, critique and reform, the third and fourth the administrative evolution from the perspective of media history and social theory. In order to facilitate interdisciplinary exchange, the proposed research is designed in a way that the four sub-projects complement each other in productive ways:

1. Protocol Culture. Transcripts of the Austrian Bureaucracy 1900–1950 (Burkhardt Wolf, Modern German Literature, University of Vienna)
2. Narrative Micro-Praxeology: Sociological and Literary Office Novels 1970/2000 (Nicolas Pethes, Modern German Literature, University of Cologne)
3. Discrete Information Machines: Data and State Protection in Cold War Basel and Beyond, c. 1900–1990 (Markus Krajewski, Media History, University of Basel)
4. Organization as Social Level and Social System. A Reconstruction of Sociological Systems Theory of Organization, c. 1900–1990 (Maren Lehmann, Sociological Theory, Zeppelin University Friedrichshafen, Lake Constance)