Facilitators have identified three themes among the case statements for discussion in the weeks ahead. They are: “Ethics and Economics of Community Histories/Heritages,” “Ethical Training for Laboring Realities,” and “Shared Authority in Perspectives.” Please join the discussion by adding your comments below. Feel free to re-direct the conversation toward important ideas, oversights or nuances. Disagreement and contention welcome, respectfully.

1) What are the tangible economic benefits of public history for communities? Should there be? How do we reconcile that motive with truth-telling? This idea especially comes up in case statements by John working with Lemhi history, Edward at Dayton Aviation, Rachel’s vision of a public history cooperative, and Catherine’s examination of civil rights tourism.

Discussion

2 comments
  1. Dan Ott says:

    Looking at the question of economic benefits – its pretty clear that public historians as laborers benefit from communities investing in public history projects and spaces. For those communities, it can cut in two ways – creating a very straightforward economic benefit in the form of place-building for outsiders, that invites visitors to feel a particular connection to a place through its storied past and visit as tourists. On the flip side it could be oriented towards insiders in the community to offer a sense of social orientation and a sense of identity – but which does not offer a nice heritage package for tourists to consume. In both instances, there are clear dangers of exclusion.

    History can be simplified to make it as romantic and celebratory as possible, at the expense of people’s stories who are silenced. In thinking about my time at Homestead National Monument – this was clearly the case as interpretation glazed over the negative impact on Native American people and invented false narratives of women and African Americans sharing equally in the bounty of “free land” (not to mention the total bypassing of conversations about environmental impact). These groups may or may not be removed from contemporary geography as well as having their narratives silenced. But this message played well to a host community that prided itself on homesteading heritage (and was mostly white) and benefited from tourism dollars. In my mind, this is public history at it worst – as a continuation of abuse that reinforces traditional power structures as natural and historically founded.

    On the flip side of this, at its practical best – public history can offer community’s an opportunity to grapple with a shared past (celebratory, painful or otherwise), seeing and hearing one another in new ways. These stories, are often more complicated and often unknown however making them unlikely to produce great economic benefits through best practices and thus, unlikely to be able to support high quality professional assistance.

    And this is the fundamental paradox. Can you make the best-practice of public history pay OR does that process necessarily simplify and bastardize the outcome? In that process, do some people get benefits that others do not receive, which they are not justly “entitled to”? Are there examples that fly in the face of this dichotomy I’ve set up? Or are we left with an unsatisfactory either/or situation?

  2. Stella Ress says:

    I very much enjoy the part of public history that focuses on, as Pat Mooney-Melvin would call it, “reflective practice.” As such, it’s been fascinating reading these case studies and grappling with the questions they raise, as well as the ethical dilemmas. That being said, my inner child can’t help but scream out, “It’s not fair!” That is to say, it’s not fair that we, as public history practitioners, must continually justify our jobs or our desire for compensation. In his comment above, Dan rightfully states that public history projects economically benefit public historians. I don’t think that is a bad thing, nor do I think that it means we cannot be “neutral” (as Catherine states). Everyone who has a job has someone (or something) they must appease; it doesn’t necessarily mean they can’t do their jobs with integrity.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.