Labour Heritage Glossary. The Process of Re-contextualizing the Collection of the Museum of Engineering and Technology in Krakow, Poland

Abstract

The article presents the results of the ‘Labour Heritage Thesaurus’ project which aimed at applying concepts in the area of anthropology and work history to the practice of cultural institutions. The project was realized in regard to the under-representation of labour in discussion on heritage in Poland. The analyzed initiative consisted in building a glossary for the Museum of Engineering and Technology, Krakow, in order to re-conceptualise its collections and introduce the hitherto omitted contexts. The authors present the objectives of the project, the methods of cooperation, as well as its result in the form of a set of keywords.

KEYWORDS:

• labour heritage
• glossary of labour
• museum collection
• museum object

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the co-workers who participated in the research process and the reviewers whose comments improved the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. We define ‘heritagization’ – following Rodney Harrison (2013) – as the process through which various tangible and intangible aspects of cultures are transformed into heritage.

2. They were vital for the construction of the socialist state.

3. Among others, the works of Róża Duda and Michał Soja ‘Monument to Labour’ (2019), Daniel Rumiancew (cooperation with Iwo Rutkiewicz), ‘Banknote Prototypes’, which feature images of persons performing invisible, often care-related work (2015–2018), the art and research project of Jaśmina Wójcik spanning several years and summed up with the film ‘The Symphony of the Ursus Factory’ (2018), and choreographic works of Rafał Urbacki.

4. Among others: ‘Who Can Afford?’ Ethnographic Museum in Krakow 2021, ‘Cold Revolution: Central and Eastern European Societies in Times of Socialist Realism’, 1948–1959, at the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw 2021. Exhibitions devoted to work should also be mentioned: ‘Workers Leaving The Workplace’ Museum of Art in Łódź 2010, ‘Work and Leisure’, Alternative, Instytut Sztuki Wyspa, Gdańsk 2011.

5. Such institutions include, among others, the Museum of the Polish Peasant Movement and the Museum of the History of the Polish Cooperative Movement in Warsaw. The former focuses primarily on the operations of political parties and social organizations set up in the rural environment. In turn, Museum of the History of the Polish Cooperative Movement mainly presents the history of cooperative work and social transformations related to it, as well as persons engaged in its development, and values that foster the spirit of cooperative activity.

6. [Lab]orans is an interdisciplinary research and teaching initiative undertaken by a group of researchers from the Faculty of History, Jagiellonian University. The group focuses on the issue of work as a historical and cultural phenomenon. In particular, the bodily experience of work in the past and its contemporary representations are of interest. An important aspect of its functioning is going beyond the academy – its cooperation with entities from the social environment: museums and cultural institutions.

7. List of persons engaged in the project: Paweł Brzózka, Szymon Grygiel, Klaudia Jędrzejewska, Sonia Knapczyk, Marta Kurkowska-Budzan, Katarzyna Maniak, Karolina Maśnica, Julia Mazurek, Jakub Muchowski, Marcin Ogrodnik, Grace Simpson, Marcin Stasiak, Maja Starakiewicz, Filip Szela, Monika Widzicka.

8. The Museum operates as a self-government institution of culture. It was set up in 1998 by the Krakow Municipality. The seat of the Museum is located in the buildings of the first Krakow tram depot from the turn of the twentieth century.

9. Transferring historical machines outside the plants where they were used also generates doubts related to the de-contextualisation of the items of industrial heritage. An example of solving this problem in Sweden is work museums set up as grassroots initiatives in former plants, often by their former workers. The Arbetets museum in Norrköping (http://www.arbetetsmuseum.se/) offers organisational and substantive support for their operation. Another form for the preservation and promotion of industrial heritage in situ is the Silesian Industrial Monuments Route, covering 40 facilities in south-western Poland. The Coal Mining Museum in Zabrze manages the Route (https://zabytkitechniki.pl/).

10. Documentation of intangible heritage is more and more often incorporated into the operation of museums; however, it is the work with tangible artefacts that remains the basic model of conduct in the process of collection management.

11. The proposed ecological approach was used by Domínguez Rubio differently than in our study. Domínguez Rubio, in contrast to us, does not focus on processes and relations, but on the tangible and semiotic conditions in which the artefacts may assume the position of objects and how they are maintained in these positions (Domínguez Rubio 2016).

12. Remarks based on an informal conservation rules note used by the employees of the Museum of Engineering and Technology.

13. Other examples of such internationally recognised terminologies include: The Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names, The Getty Union List of Artist Names (both published by The Getty Research Institute), the Materials Thesaurus (published by The British Museum).

14. For example, printing can only be described by terms: printing of newspapers, printing of periodicals, printing of books, security printing, ancillary printing services, and other printing. In terms of labour experience, at this level of generality, it is impossible to differentiate jobs and printing professions, such as typesetters, linotypists or bookbinders.

15. More examples can be found on the project website: https://slownikpracy.pl/EN-Nav

Additional information

Funding

The research has been supported by a grant from the Priority Research Area Heritage under the Strategic Programme Excellence Initiative at Jagiellonian University.

Notes on contributors

Katarzyna Maniak

Katarzyna Maniak, is an adjunct professor at the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, Jagiellonian University in Krakow. Her fields of interest include the anthropology of labour and processes of labour heritagization. She also conducts research on the forms of institutionalisation of culture, approaches towards difficult heritage and social impact of heritage. Currently, she is involved in a project focused on post-conflict heritage in regions incorporated into Poland after World War II.

Jakub Muchowski

Jakub Muchowski is an adjunct professor at the Department of History of Jagiellonian University. He was a visiting scholar at the Corcoran Department of History of the University of Virginia, US (2011). His research focuses on labour history, more specifically on the study of practices of heritagization of work as well as embodied gender and class divisions of industrial workers. He is also interested in the theory of historical writing, intellectual history, holocaust and genocide studies, and Polish memory cultures.

Monika Widzicka

Monika Widzicka, historian and ethnologist, works as a researcher and curator at the Intangible Heritage Interpretation Centre of Krakow, Museum of Krakow. She has ten years of experience working in museums. She curated permanent and temporary exhibitions on urban heritage and was responsible for collection management in the Museum of Engineering and Technology in Krakow. Her research interest are intangible urban heritage, sound studies, memory studies, history of popular culture.