The Resilient Historian

Richard Hall (rhall1@dmu.ac.uk, @hallymk1)Richard Hall (rhall1@dmu.ac.uk, @hallymk1)

me: work• PhD = C18th political engagement/relationships to

power/role of community in civil and political action

• RA on Effective Early Learning Project

• Project Manager on HEFCE-funded technology-in Humanities project [Chic]

• E-Learning Co-ordinator @ DMU; History mentor; NTFS

me: voluntary

I am a Trustee of this: http://www.openchristmas.org/

I am a Governor here: http://www.forestlodge.leicester.sch.uk/

I am a disillusioned football fan: http://www.youtube.com/user/hallymk1

I twitter at: http://twitter.com/hallymk1

What does the act of being a historian in C21st civil society mean?

• Uncoerced• Shared• Boundaries• Diversity• Advocacy• Decision-making• Agency• Power

Word 1: context

• Resilience: thriving in spite of disruption

• Decision-making and agency

• Co-governance: towards social justice

• Core economy: what do we value?

Word 2: disruption• The economy

• The environment

• Power and control

• Energy

• Techno-determinism

Word 3: complexity

disruption and cultural context

Ravensbourne, 2008Hall, 2009; after Ravensbourne, 2008

Word 4: resilience

Rob Hopkins: Transition Culture

“the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganise while undergoing change, so as to retain essentially the same function, structure, identity and feedbacks”

Systemic diversity, modularity, feedback

Word 5: action

we have a choice between reliance on government and its resources, and its approach to command and control, or developing an empowering day-to-day community resilience. Such resilience develops engagement, education, empowerment and encouragement

Political action or civil action? [DEMOS, nef]

Word 6: critical

• Gramsci on organic intellectuals: praxis in context

• Friere on critical pedagogy: social transformation and emancipation

• Habermas on legitimation, colonisation, value and participation in a “lifeworld”

• Barnett on the will to learn

Word 7: lessons

• Owenite co-operation

• Thompson’s legitimation of craft and class consciousness

• Cuban attempts at self-sufficiency

• Chavez and Venuzuela

• Holocaust denial

• The ideology of UKIP/BNP

Word 8: role

Tosh: context; risk-management; open agendas

Validity, reliability, plausibility, detachment

Managing complexity and difference of interpretation

“[History] lives through debate and controversy, and that very sense of controversy by analogy is what should be sustaining public debate more generally”

Some unused words

• Adaptation

• Awareness

• Dependence

• Revaluing

• Persistence

Towards a curriculum for resilience?

• Complexity and increasing uncertainty in the world demands resilience

• Integrated and social, rather than a subject-driven• Engaging with uncertainty through projects that involve

diverse voices in civil action• Discourses of power – co-governance?• Authentic partnerships, mentoring and enquiry, in

method, context, interpretation and action

• How does History enable C21st society to address disruption?

• How do historians support the development of ideas, decision-making and agency?

• Are we helping people to exist in authentic, socio-political spaces where switches may be turned off?

Resilience: what do we value?

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