The Institut Emile Metz seeks to protect the future workers from the current mechanization of labor, by connecting their intellectual, professional, and moral values with the evolution of modern labor.
jean-pierre arend, director of the Institut Emile Metz, 19211
â¦
You will see on the screen the work of the blast furnace operator, the steelmaker, the smelter, the rolling-mill operator, of an entire work world conscious of its value. You will admire the grandeur and the complexity of the industrial organism, where the hand unites with the brain in a harmony that we strive to render as perfect as possible.
nicolas wagner, mining director of arbed, 19232
âµ
1 Introduction: Intimacy in the âAge of Steelâ
Walter Benjamin, in his Arcades Project (1927â1940), used the example of the Parisian passages couverts and their iron and glass construction to describe a new feel of urban space and a new mentality that had begun to emerge during the nineteenth century. In a âmontageâ on âIron Construction,â he noted:
It must be kept in mind that the magnificent urban views opened up by new constructions in iron ⦠for a long time were evident only to workers and engineers. ⦠For in those days who besides the engineer and the proletarian had climbed the steps that alone made it possible to recognize what was new and decisive about these structures: the feeling of space?3
Indeed, iron and steel not only influenced architecture but increasingly became important drivers of social, cultural, economic, and technological transformations that were explicitly built on the industrial worker, his strong mental attachment to the age of industrialization, and his embodied sensuous-spatial professional knowledge.4
In 1930, the German Werkbund, an association aiming to create new lifestyles through promoting aesthetic reform, published Eisen und Stahl (Iron and steel), a book that quickly became an icon of industrial photography.5 Featuring ninety-seven images by the photographer Albert Renger-Patzsch, the book included an introduction by Albert Vögler, at the time chairman of the Vereinigte Stahlwerke, a German industrial conglomerate of several coal, iron, and steel companies. In his text, Vögler stressed the tremendous cultural importance of steel and iron as materials that had come to shape intellectual life, everyday products, architecture, technology, and the economy.6 In fact, it was Vögler who coined the term âage of steelâ (Zeitalter des Stahles) to describe the early twentieth century as a distinctly new material world shaped by engineers, architects, designers, artists, industrial workers, and employees, and characterized by evolving new markets and international developments in iron and steel technology enabling mass production, fostering competition between steel-producing countries, and leading to the creation of steel cartels and internationally active companies.7
According to Vögler, technological innovation in iron and steel production, together with the collaboration between science and industry after World War i,
Within these newly emerging âsensuous landscapes,â9 nature, culture, and technologyâor, the organic, intellectual, and mechanical worldsâmay therefore be better analyzed as interconnected and entangled entities.10 In other words, the social, emotional, intellectual, and technological worlds are fundamentally intertwined while at the same time shaping and being shaped by bodily-sensory experiences and influencing how people act in the world.11
Moving within these emerging industrial landscapes, it was primarily the steel workers who, by using all their senses, established intimate relations with the steelmaking process, the steel products, and the related technologies.12 This heightened the importance of vocational orientation and training in the âage of steel.â In fact, iron and steel production and processing required
Drawing on Paul Rodawayâs Sensuous Geographies, this essay seeks to explore some features of a hidden and often forgotten âgeography of the sensesâ and to gain insight into the role of the senses in the everyday experiences of apprentices in the steel industry.16 In other words, it examines how sensingâseeing and hearing but especially touching and feelingâwas part of the learning and training activities at a progressive vocational school, how this may have affected the sensory and bodily experiences of the future workers (sensation), and how it may have contributed to their understanding, appreciation, and sense of orientation within the material world (sense making). In doing so, we consider separate yet entangled layers of sensation and âperception,â such as the sensorial, emotional, cognitive, and cultural dimensions of âreaching out to the world.â17 Consequently, we assume, with Rodaway, that âperceptual sensitivity is learnt and forms part of ⦠the socialization into a culture.â18
Our essay focuses on one of the global players in the steel business, the Luxembourg-based Aciéries réunies de Burbach-Eich-Dudelange (arbed), and its pioneering role in vocational orientation and training through the Institut Emile Metz, a vocational school founded in 1914.19 We will investigate how the schoolâs curriculum and psychometric techniques envisaged the human body
In addition, we want to explore how the Institut Emile Metzâby empowering future workers through science-oriented processes that envisaged the human body, its functions, and its senses as an essential element of the industrial-technological landscapesâcontributed to the birth of the individual. Our main focus, however, is on the interconnectedness of human bodies, machines/tools, and resources/materials in the context of science-based vocational orientation and training and on the question of how body-sensory and material aspects intersected within the specific âtechnosphereâ of the steel industry in Luxembourg.22 Psychometric techniques deliberately encouraged active and tacit sensory approaches to education by orchestrating human-material interactions within new structures of time and space in order to foster âthe intelligence of the hands,â23 âhaptic memory,â24 and âembodiment relations.â25
In what follows, we will, first, give a brief sketch of the educational program of the Institut Emile Metz. Second, we will elaborate more specifically on the testing and training of the senses. Third, we will have a closer look at one particular test, the filing test, and examine in greater detail the various sensory processes that were pioneered at the vocational school and its psycho-physiologal laboratory. Drawing on both textual and visual sources, this paper will conclude with a reflection on how photographyâitself a product of optical-mechanical innovation, mechanization, and industrializationâplayed a major role in presenting and promoting these entanglements, designs, and lifestyles of a brave new world.27
2 Hands and Brains: The Rational Organization of Vocational Training
On November 4, 1914, the Institut Emile Metz, located next to the arbed steel plant in Dudelange, Luxembourg, opened its doors to thirty-two student apprentices. The institute was founded and financed by a foundation with close personal ties to arbed stakeholders. Its purpose was to educate arbedâs own workforce including the workersâ childrenâthe future blacksmiths, locksmiths, lathe operators, planers, electricians, smelters, pattern makers, moulders, and core makersâin order to enhance the quality of production and to continually reproduce a workforce that would be motivated, ambitious, and well integrated into society. By being instructed theoretically and trained practically, by being measured and tested, the apprentices were introduced to a
The Institut Emile Metz consisted of three âactivity centersâ (centres dâaction): theory, practice, and psychotechnics. In 1922âeight years after its establishmentâthe vocational school was equipped with trade-specific workshops for apprentices and a psychophysiological laboratory. These facilities were designed to offset the disadvantages of vocational training in the factory workshops themselves, as it had taken place during the companyâs initial years under the supervision of a foreman and experienced workers.30 The factories themselves were not appreciated as suitable training spaces, since on-the-job training was often disrupted by the unpredictability of factory life and hampered by the low commitment of older workers who were paid for performance and therefore were more interested in increasing their output than in instructing and coaching apprentices. The laboratory, in contrast, made it possible to study and analyze the apprenticesâ professional skills and their various tasks and subtasks in order to determine and teach the most hygienic and profitable labor performance.31 After August 1, 1922, the Institut Emile Metz comprised three fully operational components: (1) the vocational school, which provided apprentices with professional knowledge and prepared them for their future roles in a modern society; (2) the workshops, which taught specific work ethics and values; and, finally, (3) the psychophysiological laboratory, where the technical and professional skills of the apprentices were screened, analyzed, and trained while âleading them [i.e., the apprentices] toward maximum individual happiness.â32 The founders and the staff of the vocational school claimed
Approximately fifteen hours a week were devoted to theoretical instruction and physical education.34 Theoretical instruction was designed to foster the individual development of the apprentices, allow them to orient themselves in modern society, and gain insight into the various production processes, including the most basic handling of tools and raw materials. The first three semesters were mainly devoted to general instruction (e.g., languages, history, mathematics, physics, freehand drawing), while from the fourth semester onward more specialized courses were taught (e.g., technical arithmetic, engineering, metallurgy, electricity, mechanics, iron foundry work, technical drawing). It is worth mentioning that drawing was a mainstay of the curriculum and that the apprentices were instructed in different disciplines of drawing. During the first two years of training, they had to take arithmetic, drawing, and freehand drawing lessons. Freehand drawing focused on exercises based on aesthetics, memory, imagination, and observation.35 Technical drawing was introduced in the third year and included training in the use of symbols, scales, and conventions of display. Additional emphasis was put on the development of spatial imagination, visualization, perception, and memory as well as on geometrical features and dimensions. In addition, visual thinking was trained by asking apprentices to cut geometric solids by a plane and draw longitudinal and cross-sections of these objects. Physical education (rational Swedish gymnastics and swimming) was essential, as a healthy condition was seen as conducive to a stable character and a well-balanced mind. Through this curriculumâwhich included aesthetic, moral, and social elementsâthe Institut Emile Metz aimed for the âtotal formation of the workerâ (as opposed to the creation of âdemi-savantsâ). It sought to produce model workers who, as
In the workshopsââwhere the eyes and hands are trained while being guided by the brainâ40âthe apprentices were taught how to handle and use tools and measuring equipment, such as files, rulers, triangles, center punches, scraping knives, etching needles, hammers, bench-vises, saws, and drills. The apprenticesâ correct body posture, appropriate use of physical strength, and keeping to a regular and natural rhythm were rigorously scrutinized and drilled with a view to obtaining the most economical performance without wasting human energy. The apprentices were also instructed to manufacture their own tool sets, which can be interpreted as a kind of transition ritual and a sign of taking ownership of their future work. During the first six months in the workshop, all apprentices, with the aid of a file, a ruler, and a triangle, built a rectangular prism: a square prism which, with the aid of a bigger toolkit, was then transformed into a hexagonal prism used to make bolts. Transforming a cylindrical piece into a square prism with the aid of a hammer and a graver was part of the curriculum of the second semester of the first year. At this point the apprentices made their own tools (e.g., turnkeys, bench-vises, caliper compasses) and got involved in the production processes. This continued during the third and fourth semesters. The apprentices also executed small (repair) jobs on demand. At the same timeâand irrespective of their future tradeâthey were introduced to smithery (during a six- to eight-week training at the forge); soldering work (during a series of practical courses), workbench work, planning, and grinding (with simple machines). During their last year of training, a lot of time was spent on the factory floor. The apprenticesâ performance on the job was meticulously recorded in personal journals and regularly checked by the head of the apprentice workshop. In addition to this general program, the school also offered a variety of trade-specific programs (e.g., for blacksmiths, locksmiths, lathe operators, planers, electricians, smelters, pattern makers, molders, and core makers).
Testing in the laboratory was seen as key to obtaining a precise and complete picture of the apprenticesâ senses, muscular system, physical and mental
3 Progressive Testing of the Senses: Fabricating Sensuous Geographies
It is necessary to distinguish three types of tests that during the 1920s were applied to measure and train the senses.43 The first series of tests focused on individual senses, more specifically on the acuity, reaction speed, and fatigue of seeing, touching, and hearing (aptitudes psycho-physiologiques). A second series took a multi-sensory approach to test the perceptual system of the body and train the coordination of different senses. The last category dealt with job-specific skills (aptitudes professionnelles). The testing and training of the different sense organs in the laboratory and workshops thus followed a progressive structure and aimed at a meticulously designed and interconnected map of entangled sensations and perceptions.
3.1 Seeing, Hearing, and Touching
The testing and training of the senses (aptitudes psycho-physiologiques) focused on seeing, touching, and hearing. The testing of seeing as a distinctive
The hearing test (examen de lâaudition) and assessment of touch were also done with the aid of a psychograph and followed a similar procedure.44 Hearing, too, was tested through the use of fingertips. In a simple test, the apprentices were asked to tap a key as soon as they heard a sound.45 A second hearing test focused on the sounds of rotating machines operating at different speeds. The test examined the ability to recognizeâby means of soundâthe variations of a running machine by using a rotating cylinder whose speed could be adjusted by the person administering the test. The manipulated changes in speed were noticeable within a fifth of a second and marked on the cylinder; the test persons responded by tapping on a Mareyâs tambour, and their responses were recorded through corresponding marks.46 In one of the touch
3.2 The Hand and the Eye
The systematic testing and training of the hand and the eye aimed at the perceptual system of the body and the coordination of the senses.50 The sensory training provided for the apprentices of the Institut Emile Metz was designed to enhance their haptic memory and help them perceive embodied relations. One of the tests consisted of bending iron wires with bare hands into a given shape. The test made apprentices experience the quality and flexibility of iron. The activity was repeated five times to check the apprenticesâ ability to anticipate the material quality and acquire manual dexterity.51 Another test focused on perforating paper strips by punching holes in a grid structure as quickly and accurately as possible, a test that was repeated ten times. This test has been photographedâpresumably, as can be inferred from the deliberate staging and configuration of the equipment, to demonstrate its design and functioning at conferences: The photograph (see Fig. 4.1) shows the test person moving the paper strip with one hand and punching the holes as accurately as possible. In the center of the image we see the cylindrical recorder, registering the time to perform the test (length of the graph), the punching rhythm, and the power used to push down the punch. Another image (see Fig. 4.2) displays the recording devices as well as the test results of two trials, with the lower graph showing a steady and powerful performance.
Perforating test in the laboratory of the Institut Emile Metz.© Institut Emile Metz. CNA Collection.
Recording devices and test results of the perforating test. Digital positives from glass plate negatives. © Institut Emile Metz. cna Collection.
Another test was designed to evaluate the coordination of the hands. The test person was asked to move along a given track as quickly and accurately as
Coordination test with a two-hand coordinator (Zweihandprüfer) and a given track in the background. Digital positive from glass plate negative. © Institut Emile Metz. cna Collection.
3.3 Occupational Skills: Hammering and Filing
The third series of testing and training was dedicated to work- or job-related skills (aptitudes professionnelles). The training of âperceptual sensitivityâ in connection with work-related skills was a central component of the curriculum of the Institut Emile Metz. Besides filing and hammering, activities like forming, drilling, carving, folding, and bending were seen as essential and were performed with different tools and raw materials.
The hammering test focused on the kinesthetic sense. The kinesthetic sense (muscles and joints) was tested by hammer blows that the test person was to exert with equal force on a mobile object (Moede device, see Fig. 4.4), registering differences in the rhythm and force of the blows. The test person first beat the hammer several times while checking the movement of a needle. Then he had to continue to strike, if possible using the same force, without looking at the needle. Figure 4.5 shows the test results for twelve apprentices, displaying two series of strikes for each apprentice (from right to left). The horizontal line makes it possible to compare the amplitude of the recorded hammer blows.52
Hammering test and graphs. Reprinted from Robert, âLa psychologie appliquée au service de la formation professionnelle et du travailâ (1954), 72.
The filing test was one of the most refined testing and training methods at the Institut Emile Metz (see Fig. 4.6). It addressed different forms of touch by also training the coordination of other senses and rehearsing a sophisticated rhythm. During the filing test,
Filing test. Reprinted from Robert, âLa psychologie appliquée au service de la formation professionnelle et du travailâ (1954), 70.
the body needed to be upright, flexible and positioned at an exact distance from the vise, the latter placed at the level of the navel. The feet had to be positioned at a specific angle, and the heels at a precise distance. The left arm was supposed to be completely extended and exert slightly greater pressure on the tool than the right arm. The fileâs movements were to take the form of an effortless gliding back and forth, the rhythm of which was expected to correspond to a predetermined count per minutes.53
Materials were touched in different ways, while their materiality, in turn, led to different experiences of touch: The apprenticeâs right hand had to grip the wooden handle to fixate the file. In fact, the touch of steel was experienced through the flesh of the hand and through the extension of the body via the
Figures 4.7â4.9 show how the experimental settings of the psychophysiological laboratory were translated into educational practice. A progressive and systematic approach to the testing and training of the senses fostered the creation of new â[multi-]sensuous geographiesâ with the aid of an elite of workers. In sum, âintimate sensingââthat is, active and tacit human-material interactions along with emotional and intellectual engagementâplayed a key role in examining, selecting, and training the apprentices of the Institut Emile Metz for their future work.54 The precise and efficient handling of tools and materials as well as the training curriculum were designed to help create social, emotional, sensory, and mental dispositions, which in turn were to have positive effects on the workplace in particular and industrial societies in general.
Filing tests and training at the instituteâs psychophysiological laboratory and workshops. Digital positives from glass plate negatives. © Institut Emile Metz. cna Collection.
4 The Touch of Steel and the Rhythm of Modernity
In this section, we will take a closer look at the filing test and illustrate in greater detail the various sensory processes that occurred during the testing and training procedures. We thus want to gain more insight into the feelings provoked by human-material entanglements, and into how âtouchâ was experienced and observed in this context. In other words, we will investigate how apprentices were encouraged to develop bodily-sensory engagement with the technosphere in order to âlearn new ways of relating themselves to the material world.â55 Touch has often been labeled as âthe mother of the senses,â and includes a wide variety of âtactile senses,â such as âpressure, pain, temperature, and muscle movements.â56 In addition, touchâlike other sensory perceptionsâis said to help us âperceive objects we manipulateâ and interact with.57 Touch is also said to help us build intimate physical and bodily relationships with the material world and to develop sensible knowledge.58
The filing experiment in the laboratory of the Institut Emile Metz was based not only on sophisticated eye-hand coordination, but also on precise body movements. Drawing on Richard Sennettâs work, we suggest that it is the rhythmic movement of the hand that creates positive emotions, activates the body, motivates the mind, and connects the human body with technology and the material world.59 This connection is the result of a neuronal network in the body that integrates touch with other human senses (such as vision) in a mode of anticipation or âprehension.â60 Filing, as it was experienced by the apprentices of the Institut Emile Metz, could generate a rewarding effect through minutely differentiating between different levels of speed, strength, grip, touch, and tapping.61 In addition, the sensorial effects of the material itself could create pleasure and satisfaction.62 Indeed, the filing experiment not only hinted at optimizing the workerâs body but also at the perfect match, or combination, of mind, memory, and emotions within the future workerâs body. Both the training of the senses and related emotions were to be connected to the mind and thus experienced as part of a learning process that focused on the perfection and conscious optimization of touch. By connecting senses, emotions, and the mind in optimized ways, future workers were trained to become agents of societal transformation and promoters of a specific work ethos.63 With Foucault, one could even argue that the experimental equipment of the psychophysiological laboratory was a âmediumâ that could transform âlogosâ into âethos.â64 Apprentices experienced this intellectual and ethical transformation process as an innovative, progress-oriented, and complex sensorial training that not only included measurable, active but also rather intuitive, reactive components.65
Don Ihde, in his article on âThe Experience of Technology: Human-Machine Relations,â posits that touch can also be analyzed as âa distant sense.â66 Indeed, the filing experiment stimulated various distant as well as ânakedâ experiences with steel and iron.67 On the one hand, steel and iron were experienced
At a time when science found its way into vocational orientation and training, new forms of observing touch emerged. During the filing experiment, the apprenticesâ movements were electronically recorded on paper: The touch of steel became a visible pattern. In the case of the filing test, a dynamographic file as well as the recording tools acted as interconnected technologies to observe touch by electronic-visual means. In other words, touch became visible through technologies of recording and display (e.g., the movement of the needle during the hammering test), which could be described as touching from a distance or, more concretely, as touching with the mind. We have, in sum, discussed different forms of touch: naked touch, which refers to touching via the skin; distant or mediated touch, which involves a tool or other technologies; a third form of touch refers to the mind (reasoning and imagination); and a fourth and final kind refers to emotional touch (being touched). We would, therefore, like to argue that an exploration of sensuous geographies should also involve looking at their entanglement with geographies of knowledge and emotions.
5 Conclusion: Intimacy and Belonging
The establishment of the psychophysiological laboratory at the Institut Emile Metz marked a milestone in vocational orientation and training at a time when the collaboration between science and the metallurgical industry brought about tremendous changes in architecture, technology, the economy, and intellectual life. The emergence of new textures, new fabrics, new surfaces,
Cover image of Revue Technique Luxembourgeoise 29, no. 6 (November 1937).
One medium that may be helpful in this endeavor is photography. Many photographs taken in the context of the Institut Emile Metz show workers touching the machines and gigantic products of the steel industry with their naked hands in a gesture of intimacy, pride, and professional agency (see figs. 4.11 and 4.12).72 Consequently, photography, very much like the visual display of testing and training results, can be described as another technology of touch that has the effect of being present at a distance.73 The sense of intimacy and belonging to the technosphere is grounded in embodied relations and sensory-spatial experiences, which in turn were fostered by the visualization, reproduction, and circulation of photographic images. As agents of the âage of steelâ and tools of industrial promotion campaigns, photographs were meant
Worker sitting on a part of a hydraulic turbine.© Institut Emile Metz. cna Collection.
Workers touching machines. Digital positives from glass plate negatives. © Institut Emile Metz. cna Collection.
In addition, the smooth surfaces, impressive sizes and shapes of the steel machinery and products displayed in the photographs refer to a hidden knowledge that was presumably accessible to the workers only. Indeed, touch in its many different forms brought the workers and the products of the steel industry into close proximity and possibly evoked emotions that were based on embodied relations and tactile-spatial experiences. Touch, as displayed in the photographs, may indeed encompass âthe affective, the emotional, ⦠or more metaphorical meanings of touchâ74 that could be seen as âarchaicâ or even âprivate.â75 As we have shown in this essay, the experience of the fleshâthe hand or the bodyâplayed a major role in the âage of steelâ and its educational reform efforts. It is commonly thought that touch lost some its value and importance with the emergence of the machine age, when compared with traditional craftsmanship. This paper, however, posits the creation of intimacy between humans and technology. Even if the workersâ touch was frequently labeled as automatic, it cannot be described as unfeeling.76
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Robert Aloyse. âLa méthode psycho-physiologique du travail et lâorientation professionnelle.â In Institut Emile Metz: Programme publié à la clôture de lâannée scolaire 1919â1920, 53â71. Luxembourg: Imprimerie Joseph Beffort, 1920.
Robert, Aloyse. âLâorientation professionnelle pratiquée à lâInstitut E. Metz de Dommeldange (Luxembourg)âRapport presenté par M. Robert à la 3me sectionâConférence internationale de psychotechnique de Barcelone (Septembre 1921).â In Institut Emile Metz: Programme publié à la clôture de lâannée 1921â1922, 77â82.
Robert Aloyse. âLa psychologie appliquée au service de la formation professionnelle et du travail.â In Institut Emile MetzâLycée Technique Privé Emile Metz (1914â1954), 45â83. Luxembourg: Imprimerie Bourg-Bourger, 1954.
Robert Aloyse. âRecherches sur lâentrainement et lâéducabilité au point de vue professionnel.â Revue de la science du travail: Psychotechnique et organisation 1, no. 2 (1929): 233â54.
Rodaway Paul. Sensuous Geographies: Body, Sense and Place. Abingdon: Routledge, 1994.
Schweizerisches Nationalmuseum, ed. Arbeit/Le Travail: Fotografien aus der Schweiz 1860â2015/Photographies provenant de Suisse 1860â2015. Zurich: Limmat Verlag, 2015.
Sennett Richard. The Craftsman. London: Allen Lane, 2008.
Sennett Richard. Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization.New York: Norton, 1994.
Shotter, John. âReflections on Sociomateriality and Dialogicality in Organization Studies: From âInter-â to âIntra-Thinkingâ⦠in Performing Practices.â In Carlile et al., How Matter Matters, 32â57.
Suchman Lucy A. âEmbodied Practices of Engineering Work.â Mind, Culture and Activity 7, no. 1 (2000): 4â18.
Suchman Lucy A. Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Tuan Yi-Fu. Topophilia.Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974.
White Richard. The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River. 3rd ed. New York: Harper Collins, 1997.
Wolbring Barbara. Krupp und die Ãffentlichkeit im 19. Jahrhundert: Selbstdarstellung, öffentliche Wahrnehmung und gesellschaftliche Kommunikation. Munich: C. H. Beck, 2000.
Jean-Pierre Arend, âLâEvolution de lâInstitut Emile Metz et lâatelier dâapprentissage,â in Institut Emile Metz: Programme publié à la clôture de lâannée scolaire 1920â1921 (Luxembourg: Imprimerie Th. Schroell, 1921), 50. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are the authorsâ own.
From Nicolas Wagnerâs opening speech at the first Luxembourg National Trade Fair in Esch-sur-Alzette in September 1923, cited in Ira Plein, âMachines, Masses, and Metaphors: The Visual Making of Industrial Work(ers) in Interwar Luxembourgâ (in this volume).
Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 156.
See also Karin Priem and Frederik Herman, âHautnah: Materialität der Moderne und sensomotorische Ansätze der Berufsbildung im âZeitalter des Stahles,ââ in Die Sache(n) der Bildung, ed. Christiane Thompson, Rita Casale, and Norbert Ricken (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2017), 213â40.
Albert Renger-Patzsch, Eisen und Stahl (Berlin: Verlag Hermann Reckendorf, 1931).
Ibid., 1. In 1932, Vögler was one of the industrial leaders supporting Adolf Hitler. See Vera Hierholzer, âAlbert Vögler 1877â1945: Industrieller, Politiker,â Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin, https://www.dhm.de/lemo/biografie/albert-voegler.
Renger-Patzsch, Eisen und Stahl, 1.
See Richard Sennett, Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization (New York: Norton, 1994); Tim Dant, Material Culture in the Social World (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1999).
See J. Douglas Porteous, âSmellscape,â Progress in Physical Geography 9, no. 3 (1985): 356â78; J. Douglas Porteous, Landscapes of the Mind: Worlds of Sense and Metaphor (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990); Paul Rodaway, Sensuous Geographies: Body, Sense and Place (Abingdon: Routledge, 1994). âSensuous landscapesâ is our term, inspired by these works.
See Hartmut Böhme, âKulturgeschichte der Technik,â in Orientierung Kulturwissenschaft, ed. Hartmut Böhme, Peter Matussek, and Lothar Müller (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 2000), 164â78; David Nye, Technology Matters: Questions to Live With (Cambridge, MA: mit Press, 2006); Martina HeÃler, Kulturgeschichte der Technik (Frankfurt: Campus, 2012).
See Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007); Richard White, The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River, 3rd ed. (New York: Harper Collins, 1997); Mark Paterson, The Senses of Touch: Haptics, Affects and Technologies, 2nd ed. (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2012); Paul R. Carlile et al., eds., How Matter Matters: Objects, Artifacts, and Materiality in Organization Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 3.
See Porteous, Landscapes of the Mind; Paterson, The Senses of Touch, 4, 6.
Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses, 2nd ed. (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2007), 40; Paterson, The Senses of Touch, 7, 16, 95.
Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin, 45, 66.
Ibid., 53â54.
Rodaway, Sensuous Geographies.
See Yi-Fu Tuan, Topophilia (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974).
Rodaway, Sensuous Geographies, 22.
arbed, the predecessor of ArcelorMittal, resulted from the merger of several steel producers in 1911: the Société Anonyme des Hauts Fourneaux et Forges de Dudelange, the Société Anonyme des Mines de Luxembourg et Forges de Sarrebruck, and the Société en commandite des Forges dâEich, le Gallais, Metz et Cie. For further information on the vocational school, its psychophysiological laboratory, its main protagonists, and its relation to social-educational reform, see Frederik Herman, âForging Harmony in the Social Organism: Industry and the Power of Psychometric Techniques,â History of Education 43, no. 5 (2014): 592â614.
In the sphere of recreation, the school also focused on training the senses by means of Swedish gymnastics and scout activities. At first sight, these activities may seem to relate to ânatureâ as a counter-sphere to industrialization, but their prominent position in the wider curriculum of the Institut Emile Metz clearly indicates the involvement of modern âtechnologies of the bodyâ; see Frederik Herman, Karin Priem, and Geert Thyssen, âKörper_Maschinen? Die Verschmelzung von Mensch und Technik in Pädagogik, Industrie und Wissenschaft,â Jahrbuch für Historische Bildungsforschung 20 (2014): 47â75.
See Carlile et al., How Matter Matters, 2.
Don Ihde, âThe Experience of Technology: Human-Machine Relations,â Philosophy & Social Criticism 2, no. 3 (1975): 276â79. The term âtechnosphereâ is Ihdeâs, see ibid., 279. On interconnectedness, see Matthew Jones, âUntangling Sociomateriality,â in Carlile et al., How Matter Matters, 197â226. The authors would like to thank Noah Sobe for pointing out that, within this context, workersâ bodies were seen not only in terms of muscular power but also in terms of fine-tuned sensorial, sensitive, and social bodies.
See Richard Sennett, The Craftsman (London: Allen Lane, 2008); Klaus Prange, âErziehung als Handwerk,â in âDie Materialität der Erziehung: Kulturelle und soziale Aspekte pädagogischer Objekte,â ed. Karin Priem, Gudrun M. König, and Rita Casale, special issue, Zeitschrift für Pädagogik 58 (2012): 81â91.
Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin, 60.
Ihde, âThe Experience of Technology,â 277. See also Lucy A. Suchman, âEmbodied Practices of Engineering Work,â Mind, Culture and Activity 7, no. 1 (2000): 4â18; Lucy A. Suchman, Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
See Herman, Priem, and Thyssen, âKörper_Maschinenâ; see also John Shotter, âReflections on Sociomateriality and Dialogicality in Organization Studies: From âInter-â to âIntra-Thinkingâ⦠in Performing Practices,â in Carlile et al., How Matter Matters, 33.
See Lewis Hine, Men at Work: Photographic Studies of Modern Men and Machines (New York: Dover, 1977); Barbara Wolbring, Krupp und die Ãffentlichkeit im 19. Jahrhundert: Selbstdarstellung, öffentliche Wahrnehmung und gesellschaftliche Kommunikation (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2000); Herman, Priem, and Thyssen, âKörper_Maschinenâ; Frederik Herman and Ira Plein, âEnvisioning the Industrial Present: Pathways of Cultural Learning in Luxembourg (1880sâ1920s),â Paedagogica Historica 53, no. 3 (2017): 268â84; Robert Hariman, âIcon, Allegory, Catastrophe: Three Modes of Articulation within 21st Century Public Culture,â in On Display: Visual Politics, Material Culture, and Education, ed. Karin Priem and Kerstin te Heesen (Münster: Waxmann, 2016), 17â34.
The term is Rodawayâs, see his Sensuous Geographies, 5.
Arend, âLâInstitut E. Metz et lâatelier dâapprentissage,â 50.
arbed, Åuvres sociales (Luxembourg: Victor Bück, 1922), 46.
Ibid., 47.
Ibid., 42.
Ibid., 47.
For more detailed information about the instituteâs three-year curriculum, see Institut Emile Metz: Programme publié à la clôture de lâannée 1917â1918 (Luxembourg: Imprimerie Universelle Linden & Hansen, 1918), 63â64; see also arbed, Åuvres sociales, 49â52.
Institut Emile Metz: Programme publié à la clôture de lâannée 1917â1918, 63â64. The curriculum in drawing, like in other subjects, seems to have undergone slight changes over time; see LâInstitut Emile Metz (1914â1954) (Luxembourg: Imprimerie Bourg-Bourger, 1954), 143â44. For Gottfried Boehm, drawing in particular is âclosely connected with all processes of grasping realityâ; drawing can be said to touch the eye and the mind while being based on a specific sensory connection between the hand, a drawing tool, the mind, and the eye that cannot be replaced by any other form of (re-)presenting the material world; see Gottfried Boehm, Wie Bilder Sinn erzeugen: Die Macht des Zeigens, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Berlin University Press, 2007), 143â44.
arbed, Åuvres sociales, 51.
See also Sennett, The Craftsman.
Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin, 60.
See also Ihde, âThe Experience of Technology.â
Jean Renard, âUne visite à lâInstitut Emile Metz,â Bulletin internationalâBureau international des fédérations nationales du personnel de lâenseignement secondaire public 5 (1922): 84.
See Nicolas Braunshausen, âPsychologische Personalbogen als Hilfsmittel der Pädagogik und der Berufsberatung,â in Institut Emile Metz: Programme publié à la clôture de lâannée scolaire 1917â1918, 21; Aloyse Robert, âLa psychologie appliquée au service de la formation professionnelle et du travail,â in Institut Emile MetzâLycée Technique Privé Emile Metz (1914â1954) (Luxembourg: Imprimerie Bourg-Bourger, 1954), 45â83; arbed, Åuvres sociales, 27.
Institut Emile Metz: Programme publié à la clôture de lâannée scolaire 1921â1922 (Luxembourg: Imprimerie Th. Schroell, 1922).
Some of the tests used in the laboratory were developed at the Institut Emile Metz itself, and their findings were extensively reported at several international conferences (e.g., in Paris in 1927, Utrecht in 1928, and Barcelona in 1929); see Herman, âForging Harmony in the Social Organism.â
See Aloyse Robert, âLa méthode psycho-physiologique du travail et lâorientation professionnelle,â in Institut Emile Metz: Programme publié à la clôture de lâannée scolaire 1919â1920 (Luxembourg: Imprimerie Joseph Beffort, 1920), 53â71.
Ibid., 64.
Aloyse Robert, âLâorientation professionnelle pratiquée à lâInstitut E. Metz de Dommeldange (Luxembourg)âRapport presenté par M. Robert à la 3me sectionâConférence internationale de psychotechnique de Barcelone (Septembre 1921),â in Institut Emile Metz: Programme publié à la clôture de lâannée 1921â1922, 80â81.
Robert, âLa méthode psycho-physiologique du travail,â 64.
Robert, âLâorientation professionnelle pratiquée à lâInstitut E. Metz,â 80.
Ibid.
Aloyse Robert, âRecherches sur lâentrainement et lâéducabilité au point de vue professionnel,â Revue de la science du travail: Psychotechnique et organisation 1, no. 2 (1929): 233â54.
Aloyse Robert, Berufliche Ausbildung auf psychotechnischer Grundlage (Luxembourg: Gustave Soupert, n.d.), 15.
Robert, âLa psychologie appliquée au service de la formation professionnelle et du travail,â 72.
Herman, Priem, and Thyssen, âKörper_Maschinen?,â 58â59. For more background information, see arbed, Åuvres sociales, 54; V. Neyens, âLa psychologie appliquée au service dâune école et de la formation professionnelle,â in Institut Emile MetzâLycée Technique Privé Emile Metz (1914â1989) (Luxembourg: Imprimerie Saint-Paul, 1989), 97â109; Aloyse Robert, âCoup dâoeil rétrospectif sur 40 années dâactivité de lâInstitut Emile Metz,â in LâInstitut Emile Metz (1914â1954) (Luxembourg: Imprimerie Bourg-Bourger, 1954), 21â42; Robert, âLa psychologie appliquée au service de la formation professionnelle et du travail,â 50; Anson Rabinbach, The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue and the Origins of Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 186.
See J. Douglas Porteous, âIntimate Sensing,â Area 18, no. 3 (1986): 250; David Howes, âArchitecture of the Senses,â in Sense of the City: An Alternate Approach to Urbanism, ed. M. Zardini (Montreal: Canadian Centre for Architecture; Baden, Switzerland: Lars Müller Publishers, 2005), 322â32.
Shotter, âReflections on Sociomateriality,â 32.
See Herman, Priem, and Thyssen, âKörper_Maschinenâ; Priem and Herman, âHautnah.â
See Tiffany Field, Touch (Cambridge, MA: mit Press, 2001), 83; Bruno Latour, Eine neue Soziologie für eine neue Gesellschaft: Einführung in die Akteur-Netzwerk-Theorie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2010).
Silvia Gherardi and Manuela Perrotta, âDoing by Inventing the Way of Doing: Formativeness as the Linkage of Meaning and Matter,â in Carlile et al., How Matter Matters, 238ff.
Sennett, The Craftsman, 201â39.
Ibid.
Ibid., 235; see also Gherardi and Perrotta, âDoing by Inventing the Way of Doing,â 238; Constance Classen, The Book of Touch (Oxford: Berg, 2005), 401â2; Dorinne Kondo, âPolishing Your Heart: Artisans and Machines in Japan,â in Classen, The Book of Touch, 409â11.
See Sennett, The Craftsman, 235; Paterson, The Senses of Touch, 30â32.
See Paterson, The Senses of Touch.
Michel Foucault, LâHerméneutique du sujet: Cours au Collège de France, 1981â82 (Paris: Editions de lâEcole des Hautes Etudes, Editions Gallimard, Editions du Seuil, 2001), 312.
See Paterson, The Senses of Touch, 30â32; Rodaway, Sensuous Geographies.
Ihde, âThe Experience of Technology,â 271.
Ibid.
Ibid.
William M. Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
Gherardi and Perotta, âDoing by Inventing the Way of Doing.â
See, e.g., Bjørnar Olsen, âReclaiming Things: An Archaeology of Matter,â in Carlile et al., How Matter Matters, 175; Philipp Blom, âForces Unbound: Art, Bodies, and Machines after 1914,â in Nothing but the Clouds Unchanged: Artists in World War I, ed. Gordon Hughes and Philipp Blom (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2014), 4â14; Gordon Hughes, ââIn Dead Men Breathâ: The Afterlife of World War I,â in Hughes and Blom, Nothing but the Clouds Unchanged, 15, 21.
Paterson, The Senses of Touch.
Ibid., 127.
Ibid., 3.
Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin, 16. See also Schweizerisches Nationalmuseum, ed., Arbeit/Le Travail: Fotografien aus der Schweiz 1860â2015/Photographies provenant de Suisse 1860â2015 (Zurich: Limmat Verlag, 2015); Paterson, The Senses of Touch, 31â33.
See Constance Classen, The Deepest Sense: A Cultural History of Touch (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012), 180.