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Leibniz Postdoc School "Resources in Societies"

Contact: Prof. Dr. Thomas Stöllner, duration: June 2017 until September 2020



Team members of the Leibniz Postdoc School "Resources in Societies" (ReSoc).

In today's political debate, raw materials and resources are playing an increasingly important role - in particular, accessibility and security of raw materials and the shareholder value of deposit valuations are at the centre of mostly economic interests. What is neglected here is that raw materials and resources are deeply culturally categorised: Their utilisation is based on needs and technical knowledge that people have acquired in dealing with their environment. Resources are therefore much more than useful raw materials: they reflect human social and cultural practice and are therefore the expression of a multi-layered process of appropriation, which as such is embedded in various changes. The project "Resources in Societies" (ReSoc) - a co-operation between the Deutsches Bergbau-Museum Bochum (DBM) and the Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) - deals with these changes in the handling of resources and the resulting effects on societies.

The ‘entanglement’ of humans with their environment and resources as well as the associated social changes are still a desideratum of theoretical research approaches. In ReSoc, such resource-based transformation processes were analysed on a theoretical and empirical basis. Practical theoretical approaches (according to A. Giddens and P. Bourdieu) helped to analyse the embedding of social institutions and their resource-driven modes of action. In addition, current references to the materiality discourse in the social sciences and humanities were taken into account. ReSoc aimed at a multivocal perspective in which the entanglement of humans with their materialised environment is revealed through various practices. This also includes how social institutions emerge and change through such processes.

How have small-scale processes of raw material appropriation developed into cultural constructs (e.g. through technical knowledge and learning processes; through the practice of extraction, etc.)? How are these processes reflected in the appropriation and construction of social spaces and ultimately in social transformation processes? What interactions can be observed?

These questions were analysed on a theoretical and empirical level in three fields of research:

  1. Appropriating (raw) materials - transferring and transforming things: Resources and materials in practice
     
  2. ‘Making space’, the growth of knowledge and innovation through resources and as a resource
     
  3. Changing societies: Actors in materialised asymmetries

Five postdoctoral projects in the fields of archaeology, economics, archaeometallurgy and mining archaeology were funded as part of ReSoc. In addition to their own research, the postdocs took on teaching and practical roles in scientific administration and museum practice. By opening up career paths in this way, the DBM is planning to develop a sustainable postdoc strategy.


Projects

Team Members

Postdoctorand:innen: Maja Gori, Yiu-Kang Hsu, Frederik Schaff, Peter Thomas, Arne Windler

Principal Investigators: Sabine Klein, Michael Roos, Constance von Rüden, Thomas Stöllner

Advisory Board: Roland Hardenberg, Frank Hillebrandt, Marc Pearce, Susan Pollock


Publications
  • Frederik Schaff, Maja Gori, Peter Thomas, Yiu-Kang Hsu & Petra Eisenach, Leibniz-Postdoktorandenschule „Resources in Societies (ReSoc)“, in: Jahresbericht des Instituts für Archäologische Wissenschaften für das akademische Jahr 2017–2018. Bochum, 2018, S. 130–131.
     
  • Thomas Stöllner, Fokusprojekt 2017. Resources in Societies (ReSoc) – Leibniz Postdoc-Schule, in: Deutsches Bergbau-Museum Bochum, Jahresbericht 2017. Bochum, 2018, 56–59.
     
  • Thomas Stöllner & Petra Eisenach, Das Leibniz-Postdoc-Projekt: Resources in Societies, in: Jahresbericht des Instituts für Archäologische Wissenschaften für das akademische Jahr 2016–2017. Bochum, 2017, S. 127–128.

Cooperation Partners and Financial Support

The Leibniz Postdoc School "Resources in Societies" (ReSoc) is a co-operation between the Deutsches Berbgbau-Museum Bochum and the Ruhr-Universität Bochum. It was funded by the Leibniz Association.