This article investigates the emergence of the concept of stress in the 1930s and outlines its changing disciplinary and conceptual frames up until 1960. Originally stress was a physiological concept applied to the hormonal regulation of the body under stressful conditions. Correlated closely with chemical research into corticosteroids for more than a decade, the stress concept finally became a topic in cognitive psychology. One reason for this shift of the concept to another discipline was the fact that the hormones previously (...) linked to the stress concept were successfully transferred from laboratory to medical practice and adopted by disciplines such as rheumatology and dermatology. Thus the stress concept was dissociated from its hormonal context and became a handy formula that allowed postindustrial society to conceive of stress as a matter of individual concern. From a physiological phenomenon stress turned into an object of psychological discourse and individual coping strategies. (shrink)

Concerning the Crisis of the West German Politics of Limit Values in the 1970s: The Transformation of Cancer at the Workplace from a Toxicological into a Socioeconomic Problem. The paper tackles the changes that occurred in the political culture and the episteme of risk in the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1970s. The objects of observation are limit values for hazardous industrial materials, especially for carcinogens. At the forefront of the production of such values in Germany was the German (...) Research Society's Senate Commission for the Examination of Hazardous Industrial Materials. Limit values bring economy, politics, and science together and they mediate different interests. This makes limit values an ideal object of study to bring together changes in different parts of society. In 1972, a new category of limit values for carcinogenic substances is introduced, the so called „Technische Richtkonzentration”︁ (TRK). This category of values does not assume that complete safety can be reached, as do limit values for hazardous industrial materials, so called “Maximale Arbeitsplatzkonzentrationen” (MAK). This means an important rupture in toxicological thinking. Until the 1970s, Paracelsus' dictum about dosage and poison still served as starting point for toxicologists. The innovation of TRK marks an important rupture in the episteme of regulating dangerous matters. Whereas until the 1970s there existed, at least as an ideal, the myth of “no risk” or “zero tolerance” even in the case of carcinogens, since the beginning of the 1970s, certainty is no more guaranteed by epistemically, but by socially robust knowledge. This also means the return of the risk society at the beginning of the 1970s, whereby cancer at the workplace becomes – in the view of the regulatory bodies – out of a medical problem a socioeconomic illness. The paper argues that these changes are connected to a general feeling of disorientation. (shrink)

Chronische Vergiftung und die Krise regulatorischer Modelle. Chemische Mutagene in der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), 1963–1973. Die Regulierung und Prävention von Gefahren gehört zu den Hauptmerkmalen des modernen Staates. Die Vorstellungen und Konzepte von Gefahr haben sich allerdings über die Zeit verändert. Die Genealogie dieser Veränderungen zeigt, dass die Geschichte gesellschaftlicher Veränderung und die Geschichte des Wissens eng verbunden sind. In den 1970er Jahren hat eine tiefgreifende gesellschaftliche Transformation in den westlichen Industrieländern begonnen. Der vorliegende Artikel geht davon aus, dass diese (...) Entwicklung auch mit grundlegenden epistemischen Rekonfigurationen verbunden war und dass dabei die Genealogie des Risikos eine besondere Rolle gespielt hat. Diese These wird am Beispiel der Beratungspolitik der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) untersucht. Seit Anfang der 1960er Jahre beschäftigten sich die vom DFG Senat eingerichteten und auf Regulierung ausgerichteten Expertengremien (Senatskommissionen) mit der gesundheitlichen Bedrohung, die von Umweltstoffen wie Pestiziden ausgeht. Eine besondere Bedeutung kam der Senatskommission für Mutagenitätsfragen zu, da ihre Arbeit in der Gründung eines DFG‐eigenen Forschungsinstituts, des Zentrallaboratoriums für Mutagenitätsprüfung (ZLM), mündete. Die Arbeit des ZLM zeigt, dass die Erforschung und Testung mutagener Stoffe die expertenbasierte Beratungsspolitik der Mutagenitätskommission in eine Krise führten, deren Muster an die Konstellation der “Risikogesellschaft” erinnert. Es wird gezeigt, dass die hier (neu) austarierte Beziehung zwischen Wissenschaft und Politik/Öffentlichkeit besser im Rahmen einer politischen Epistemologie beschrieben wird.Low Dose Intoxication and a Crisis of Regulatory Models. Chemical Mutagens in the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), 1963–1973. Regulation and the prevention of danger are among the main characteristics of the modern state. However, the idea and the conceptualization of what danger is have changed over time. The genealogy of these changes shows that the history of social change and the history of knowledge are well connected. The 1970s marked the start of a social transformation of Western industrialized societies. This article proposes that this transformation was connected with basic epistemic reconfigurations and that the genealogy of risk played a significant role. This thesis is explored through the example of DFG advisory politics. Beginning in the 1960s, the DFG expert commissions that had been established to make policy and regulation recommendations began to focus more and more on the health effects of environmental pollution. The Commission for Questions of Mutagenicity played a particularly interesting role because its recommendations resulted in the foundation of a research institution run by the DFG, the Central Laboratory for Mutagenicity Testing (CML). The challenges faced by the CML in mutagenic research and testing effected a crisis of the expert‐based advisory politics of the Mutagenicity Commission and a fundamental shift in the way scientific (regulatory) knowledge was perceived and valued politically. The pattern of this crisis calls to mind the constellation of the “risk society”, but as will be shown, the (re)balancing of science and politics/society presented here is more adequately understood within the framework of political epistemology. (shrink)