Ud af røret? - Dansk Center for Byhistorie

to be established within a concrete historical context. Inspiration from Latour
has meant that I have focussed on the network construction of the scientists
and the formation of collective societies, just as laboratories, technical
equipment are taken to be decisive actants in the processes.
The sewage system is thus not studied as an isolated phenomenon; on the
contrary, it is analysed as being linked in a network of relations, where disparity
and tension as well as ruptures and simultaneous processes are to
be found, and where the relations and interplay between the elements are
the central object of inquiry. That is, the individual arguments, the technical
installations, investigative methods, amongst others, are what make possible
the subsequent incorporation of issues into further discussions, investigations
and plans. They are brought into play and juxtaposed, and the contemporary
debates and solutions thus necessarily carry within them both
present-day arguments and theories, as well as ones from the past. The
idea of being able to ‘wipe the slate clean’, is an illusion, as there would always
be ‘something’ of the old of which the next processes and plans would
be a part, and as a consequence, what would be possible to put on the
agenda and make the new ‘regime’ in discourse and forms of knowledge.
There would always be existing institutions, disciplines, pipes, particular orderings
and habits, which the ‘new’ must interact or break with, and which
would thus have bearing on the establishment of the new. The sewage
technology and the scientific disciplines break away both from the established
physical and material ‘systems’ such as the gutters and the cesspools,
as well as from conceptions of ‘God’s will’, paths of infection, etc.
Changes, debates and processes of establishment therefore always take
outset in what ‘is’ and this has a crucial consequence for that which ‘becomes’.
The existing technology would always be a part of what is to come,
such as the ‘outmoded’ or ‘incomplete’ solution would be.
Even though the sewerage system of Copenhagen forms the empirical fulcrum
of the study, the project addresses Copenhagen also in the light of the
city’s relations to its outside environs. In the empirical source material of the
study, I have found concrete references to an international water, gas and
sewerage competition held in Copenhagen in 1849; an international Sanitary
Congress in Copenhagen in 1858 with 520 delegates from 4 countries;
German books being translated into Danish; English studies cited directly in
the Danish sources; and also Danish engineers and physicians’ journeys to
England, Paris and Hamburg. Also, the establishment and development of
new professional journals, societies and disciplines such as Public Health
and Sanitary Engineering are incorporated in the analysis.
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