Strömung des Sozialen

Abstract

The article examines early techniques of crowd control in German unemployment agencies between 1927 and 1930, taking the establishment of the Reichsanstalt für Arbeitslosenvermittlung und Arbeitslosenversicherung (Ministerial Office for the Placement and Insurance of the Unemployed) as its point of departure. It argues that the techniques employed to manage the possible effects of amassing a huge number of people in one building are bound to the knowledge of risk and insecurity, which the institution of social insurance seeks to make governable. The Arbeitsamt here constitutes an assemblage of objects and architectural forms that implements a foresighted method of crowd-dispersion and governs the masses through stamps, doors and interior design. In the first phase of its constitution, this array of objects and spaces for the government of social instability is itself experimental, insecure and uncertain.