The History of Medicine Meets Labour History: Miners’ Bodies in the Age of Industrialization

Abstract

Abstract This article presents a survey of new approaches in German labour history that deal with the history of the body. It argues that Foucault’s conceptual and historical understanding of biopolitics enables a profound rearticulation of the history of industrial work and the process of industrialization. The article addresses, however, not only the possibilities of biopolitics but also its limitations for a reconceptualization of labour history. The methodical and theoretical discussion is linked to concrete research into the body history of German coal mining in the Ruhr.