Dig Where You Stand movement

The Dig Where You Stand movement is an international public history and adult education movement promoting public participation in research in local history. It began in Sweden in the 1970s and was given its shape by Sven Lindqvist in his book Gräv där du står (1978). Following on its success in Sweden it was taken up in other Western countries.

Sweden

The movement took its name and its founding spirit from Lindqvist's book Gräv där du står (Dig where you stand), published in 1978. It was the culmination of a variety of developments in Swedish cultural life in the 1970s such as the revival of documentarist fiction and the Bygd i förvandling ("Community in Change") local history campaign. The latter worked through books and a television series and built on the strong Swedish tradition of study circles by emphasising the training of study circle leaders. The trial in 1973 led to creation of 700 study circles with 90,000 participants in two regions.

Lindqvist's book was intended to provide a research manual for these activities, but also to bring a political perspective which the Bygd i förvandling campaign avoided. He put the focus on industrial history, and on the value of workers researching and writing the history of their companies, using their job expertise. "Factory history could and should be written from a fresh point of view -- by workers investigating their own workplaces." This would enable workers to challenge the authority of the bosses on the one hand and academic researchers on the other, and to claim the right to speak authoritatively about their work. For example, Lindqvist pointed to the worker deaths caused by exposure to asbestos dust in the cement industry, and the evidence that would be found in the bodies of the workers themselves contrasted with the profits still acruing to the owners long after the damage had been done. He called his researchers "barefoot researchers", modelled on the "barefoot doctors" of China.

The movement peaked in Sweden in the 1980s. Lindqvist admitted that it did not reach its goal of increasing workers' power in the workplace, but claimed that it did have the effect of raising the profile of working class history. Its principle concrete outputs were published testimonies of working class life such as those included in the Liv i Sverige (Life in Sweden) series originaly published by the Swedish writers' cooperative Författarförlaget. Philippe Bouguet has described it as a "small-scale Swedish 'cultural revolution'".

Germany

• Geschichtswerkstätten
• literalized in Berlin: Gestapo Gelände
• political stance: recover and confront history of crimes, first with respect to Nazi period and later East Germany

United Kingdom

• History Workshops
• socialist history

Canada

• Écomusée de la maison du fier monde in Montréal published translation/adaptation of Lindqvist
• working class history
• decolonization

Bibliography

• Lindqvist, Sven (1979). "Dig Where You Stand". Oral History. 7 (2): 24–30. ISSN 0143-0955. JSTOR 40178565.
• Lindqvist, Sven (2014). "Dig Where You Stand Movement". The SAGE Encyclopedia of Action Research. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications Ltd. p. 266. doi:10.4135/9781446294406. ISBN 9781849200271. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)
• Lindqvist, Sven (1989). Grabe wo du stehst: Handbuch zur Erforschung der eigenen Geschichte. Manfred Dammeyer (trans.). Bonn: Dietz. ISBN 978-3-8012-0144-9.
• Lindqvist, Sven; Binette, René; Drolet, Danièle; Écomusée de la maison du fier monde; Service aux collectivités de l'Université du Québec (1990). Exposer son histoire. Montréal: Écomusée de la maison du fier monde : Service aux collectivités de l'Université du Québec. ISBN 978-2-920370-18-0.
• Wüstenberg, Jenny (2017). "Dig Where You Stand: The History Movement and Grassroots Memorialization". Civil Society and Memory in Postwar Germany. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 127–177. doi:10.1017/9781316822746.005. ISBN 9781316822746.
• Bernbeck, Reinhard; Pollock, Susan (2007). "'Grabe, wo du Stehst!': An Archaeology of Perpetrators". In Yannis Hamilakis; P. G Duke (eds.). Archaeology and Capitalism: From Ethics to Politics. Walnut Creek, Calif.: Left Coast Press. pp. 217–233. ISBN 978-1-59874-270-1. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)
• Lindqvist, Sven (1978). Gräv där du står: hur man utforskar ett jobb. Stockholm: Bonnier. ISBN 978-91-0-042731-3.
• Johansson, Rolf (1983). "Dig Where You Stand: A Swedish Approach to Workers' History". Saothar. 9. Sven Lindqvist (ed.): 118–119. ISSN 0332-1169. JSTOR 23193879.
• Brier, Steve (1981-10-01). "Sweden: Dig Where You Stand". Radical History Review (25): 174–176. ISSN 0163-6545.
• Thompson, Paul (1978). "Life Histories in Poland and Scandinavia". History Workshop (6): 208–210. ISSN 0309-2984. JSTOR 4288202.
• Dhanjal, Sarah; Flinn, Andrew; Lockyear, Kris; Moshenska, Gabriel (2015-10-01). "Dig where we stand". In Kris Lockyear (ed.). Archaeology in Hertfordshire: Recent Research. Univ of Hertfordshire Press. ISBN 978-1-909291-47-8.
• Rosen, Astrid von (2017-07-14). "'Dream no small dreams!' : Impossible archival imaginaries in dance community archiving in a digital age". Rethinking Dance History. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)
• Norquay, Naomi (2002). "'Dig WhereYou Stand': Challenging the Myth of the 'White Pioneer'". Northern Terminus: The African Canadian History Journal. 1.