Project

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Kulturgeschichte des Streikens im schweizerisch-österreichischen Vergleich (1860-1950)

Applicant Koller Christian
Number 112142
Funding scheme Project funding (special)
Research institution Historisches Seminar Universität Zürich
Institution of higher education University of Zurich - ZH
Main discipline Swiss history
Start/End 01.02.2007 - 30.11.2009
Approved amount 87'400.00
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Keywords (11)

Strike; Violence; Gender; labour history; collective emotions; transnationality; discourses; political culture; memory; performative turn; agency

Lay Summary (English)

Lead
Lay summary
This project examines several aspects of strike culture by analysing 22 case studies. The study doesn’t focus on the main issues of traditional strike history, such as strike ratios and their association to other macro-data. It is rather interested in discourses about the legitimacy of strikes, in the forms of violence and collective performances, in the question of specific gender roles within strike agency, in the role and perceptions of ethnicity and collective emotions, in transnational dimensions of local strikes (such as international donation campaigns and the recruitment of strikebreakers abroad) and in the collective memory of strikes. Thus, the study aims at providing elements for a cultural renewal of labour history. Austria and Switzerland have been chosen as areas of analysis for several reasons: First, both countries have a long and sometimes bloody strike history, but both of them have nearly been lacking strikes since the 1950s and therefore, are also nearly lacking studies about their strike history. Second, both countries are interesting because of an ethnically heterogeneous working class, Switzerland with a large amount of immigrant workers before the First and after the Second World War, Austria as part of a multi-national empire until 1918. Therefore, both countries are especially suitable for analysing problems of identity and otherness within strike agency and strike discourses. Third, a country with extraordinary political stability is compared to a country whose political system changed several times within the period considered. This permits the examination of the impact of political stability or instability as well as of different political systems on strike culture.
Direct link to Lay Summary Last update: 21.02.2013

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