Selected Publications
- Theresa Wobbe, Léa Renard and Marianne Braig (Eds) (2025): Sklaverei, Freiheit und Arbeit: Soziohistorische Beiträge zur Rekonfiguration von Zwangsarbeit, Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111335230
- Martin Herrnstadt and Léa Renard (Eds) (2025): Cultures globales de l’enquête / Globale Enquêtenkulturen, in: A Propos. Deutsch Französische Forschungen für Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften [Online], 1 | 2025. https://dx.doi.org/10.57086/apropos.72
- Theresa Wobbe, Léa Renard, Nicola Schalkowski and Marianne Braig (2023): Deutungsmodelle von Arbeit im Spiegel kolonialer und geschlechtlicher Dimensionen: Kategorisierungsprozesse von „Zwangsarbeit“ während der Zwischenkriegszeit, in: Zeitschrift für Soziologie 52 (2), pp. 172-190. https://doi.org/10.1515/zfsoz-2023 2014
- Nicola Schalkowski and Léa Renard (2023): Estimating forced labour: from a legal category to a statistical category for international political campaigns, in: International Review of Sociology 33 (3), pp. 587–610. https://doi.org/10.1080/03906701.2024.2322331
- Léa Renard (2021): Vergleichsverbot? Bevölkerungsstatistiken und die Frage der Vergleichbarkeit in den deutschen Kolonien (1885-1914), in: Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 73 (Supplement 1 „Soziale Praktiken des Beobachtens: Vergleichen, Bewerten, Kategorisieren und Quantifizieren“, ed. Bettina Heintz and Theresa Wobbe), pp. 169-194. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11577-021 00745-z
FRIAS Project
Toward a Historical Sociology of Colonial Knowledge.
During my stay at FRIAS, I will develop an analytical perspective combining phenomenological, praxeological, and historical-sociological approaches to study everyday knowledge within historical contexts. This work explores the necessary revisions to the sociology of knowledge to address colonial settings. Using counting practices and the exchange of figures and tables between German settlers and colonial officers in German South West Africa (Namibia) as a case in point, I will analyze the role quantification played in the conduct of forced labor policies. The focus is on socio-technical objects, primarily reports, worker lists, and monthly overviews, in which colonial perspectives were inscribed and which served as media for interactions between colonial actors. The goal is to contribute to our understanding of the connection between colonial mentalities and the practice of racist violence. Through this project, I also hope to expand the sociological toolbox of methodologies and theories to better understand how colonial patterns of interpretation were organized, reproduced, and internalized through everyday routines.