Monika Wulz

Economies of Intellectual Work, 1820–1930

In her book project »Economies of Intellectual Work, ca. 1820–1930«, Monika Wulz explores economic conceptions of science and knowledge in the long nineteenth century. In this period, the increasing demand for intellectual work formed a significant part of the extensive social transformation of »Western« industrializing countries: During the so-called »second industrial revolution« innovation and scientific research were understood as productive factors of economic development. Against this background, also the material foundations of scientific research and intellectual work more general, its resources, funding, remuneration, value, and distribution, were debated in economic theory: on the one hand, intellectual activity was subordinated to the quest for »economization« in terms of the efficient use of energetic resources; on the other hand, the economic resources of intellectual work also formed part of the controversial debates on the »social question« around 1900 – with issues such as insufficient payment, missing job opportunities, lack of individual property, social inequalities or unemployment.

With a view to the geopolitical context of globalizing scientific and economic relations, the project analyzes how the status of intellectual work within the economic organization of society was debated from different economic and political angles and in different disciplines, such as in economic and cultural theory as well as in the then emerging fields of experimental psychology, sociology, and epistemology. It shows how, in these contexts, different and sometimes even competing approaches to the funding of intellectual work and science were debated: from fellowships for gifted students, the capital value of knowledge, reform of property or patent law or even suggestions for inheritance taxation or a basic security system in order to foster all sorts of independent intellectual activities. In this way, the project aims to develop new perspectives on the current debates about the “economization”, “neoliberalization” or “precarization” of science.