3...2...1... Impact!

Whoops, back to the diatribes...

Don't get me wrong, I very much like public history. I work in a museum and have done for quite some time. I can easily see the results things like Horrible Histories (for my generation the books, for subsequent ones especially the TV show) have had on kids' ability to relate to and be interested in history.* Some works of popular history for adults are great, and in cities like mine tours quickly fill up with visitors hoping to learn about the local past.**

But (while this is probably not something most non-academics are aware of), having public history crammed down our throats is not ok. And this brings us to "impact", the dread buzzword that now haunts anyone in history and related disciplines.

Basically, the people with the money have decided that, if your work isn't accessible/understandable/relevant to the layman off the street, it's largely not worth funding.*** Work is going to be made available--before?! the editing process--online for anyone to get hold of (how will that look when all future citations come from inaccurate versions?); new PhD positions are being created with time to be taken off to do public history work... The "impact" of your work, though we all know how to judge scholarly value, is measured by what it does for non-historians.

That's all been said before, and griped about, in academic circles. But there were a few points I wanted to set down after a very interesting conversation with a friend/colleague (or two) yesterday. Fundamentally, most of them related back to this:

Who on earth would think of asking this of a scientist?

Now, like a good academic, let me qualify this. I am sure that some scientists are receiving money based on how they've been able to show a "public" dimension to their projects.**** There are super-cool public science initiatives; how many of us still hold Bill Nye in awe and reverence? But I think we can all understand that scientists really shouldn't be concerning themselves, when doing research, with being intelligible to non-scientists. I'm not bad at science; I've done some college-level calculus, physics, and astronomy, though I wouldn't want to pretend that this was any more impressive to a real scientist than them passing my history test. But if I can understand, as effortlessly as public history is meant to feel, your project, then it's probably not very useful. Science is about doing crazy things and pushing at the boundaries of human knowledge.

So is history. Historians aren't sitting here reinventing the wheel, we're discovering new wheels that make the cart roll in cool new ways.***** So why is there this idea that our research, if it will only interest other historians, shouldn't get the funding? That's demented, frankly. The behind-the-scenes research keeps refining our picture of the past, and that will affect how the public narratives get told, if that's what you're concerned with. Fund public history. But projects without immediate "relevance" or "impact" are just as valid. They are required to make any academic discipline rigorous and... well... alive. History without the obscure work doesn't get anywhere, because the public simply isn't equipped to handle all the nuance (and it's not all their fault, nor is there necessarily a reason they should care), and if we become obsessed with catering to it, actual research will get bogged down.******

Another angle opens up here. It is valid to say that the obscure research done by, say, medical researchers, while not intelligible in itself, has real impact on the community. Fine. It is also valid to say that since history deals with culture, it is part of its duty to hand this down and make this open to the people who, after all, make culture. That's also true. In fact, if I go into academia after my PhD, I can quite see myself preferring a teaching to a research position. But what bothers me about this line of thinking is that it assumes that all scientific research, by virtue of being Science!, is super-urgent and relevant, and that history, unless you try really hard, is irrelevant.

Nonsense. There are huge areas of science that have as much impact on our daily lives as historical studies. Did I mention I really like astronomy? But studying the origins of the universe does nothing, for the layman, beyond (if they keep up with it) increasing the bounds of knowledge. That's just historical research, for all intents and purpose. Studies about animal psychology--for instance, whether pigeons can distinguish between artists... again, not really sure what this does beyond letting us know that they can. Does it influence the public, or give it tangible benefits? Nope. It just means we know more things, and that is unambiguously good.******* History accomplishes this just as much. But it hasn't gotten the validation of the Science card, and so we're asked to do things unthinkable in other disciplines.

University PR departments will take scientific research and distort it (through simplification) to publish popular news articles; this produces grumbling (rightfully) and discussions about "scientific literacy". So we expect the public to get better-conversant with science, which is fine. Historians, however, are asked to do the legwork of making things accessible to the layperson, who isn't supposed to have to do any work. Far better would be to start assuming that the ability to understand culture--because we cannot escape culture any more than we can escape the laws of physics; it shapes us and always will, no matter how scientifically-advanced we become--is a necessary human skill; and understand that while history should always be made open to people, there is a ton of work that simply doesn't need to be because the historical discussion of academics is vital.

I wouldn't claim that history departments need as much of a budget as science ones do: we don't need to pay for, say, telescopes. (There's that astronomy thing again. Anyone want to give me a telescope?). But historians and scientists both do important work, and we shouldn't have to keep an eye on having to justify ourselves through "impact". The past is cool, and it's where we came from. That's enough reason to research it, right there. Anything that makes people love it more, I fully support. And some historians want to throw themselves into that work. While doing research, though, there's enough stress that I don't want to have to spend more time worrying about how to make people care about a 14th-century duchess in a corner of France. I could try, and would probably succeed; but that's not what my research is for. To each their own.


*Terry Deary's own attitude towards "actual" historians are, however, disturbingly erroneous and spiteful. But we won't deal with that here.
**Although the Telescope and the Corset of History do suggest how problematic the "take-away" can be.
***This is not yet a universal. I'm just trying to focus on the large problem, not the exceptions.
****I don't know of any offhand, but I don't want to make assumptions they don't sometimes share this problem.
*****This metaphor was ill-advised, perhaps, but I seem to have committed to it. You win some, you lose some.
******Again, we're not here yet. I'm talking about trends and implications!
*******Though really, it's also not--the development of better weapons is just really not something I can support. That's impact, but it's not a good thing.