How much do public historians care about issues of environmental sustainability? (Part 2)

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As part of a 2010 "planetary art show" organized by 350.org, people in Brighton-Hove, UK formed a giant image of King Canute, who famously tried to control the rising ocean.  Photo credit:  Malcolm Land.

As part of a 2010 “planetary art show” organized by 350.org, people in Brighton-Hove, UK formed a giant image of King Canute, who famously tried to control the rising ocean. Photo credit: Malcolm Land.

Continued from Part 1

  • Despite their widespread encounter with issues of environmental sustainability in public history practice and a heightened concern about them, most respondents (54 percent) noted that their training in the former derived from individual study or interest rather than formal education. A full quarter of respondents have never received training in the field. Roughly equal numbers of the remaining population received their training in undergraduate or graduate settings (23 percent), on-the-job training and workshops (23 percent), or professional training and workshops (19.5 percent). Taken with the responses indicating widespread engagement with and concern about the relationship between environmental sustainability and public history practice, these findings strongly suggest that a need is not currently being met by public history education programs. Public historians are encountering issues of environmental sustainability in their work largely without formalized training.
  • Most public historians (90.2 percent) surveyed at least somewhat agree that “issues of environmental sustainability should be integrated in public history curricula at the undergraduate and graduate level.” Only 2.4 percent disagree. Respondents who strongly agree comprise 32.9 percent of the sample, while 34.1 percent moderately agree and 23.2 percent somewhat agree.

The large level of concern among public historians about issues of environmental sustainability in public history practice, their high level of engagement in their work with such issues, widely varying support of projects dealing with these issues among employers of public historians, and a lack of formalized training available to public historians regarding environmental sustainability all point to an unmet need which NCPH can take a leading role in rectifying. Survey responses strongly endorse such a posture on the part of the organization, with 85.2 percent at least somewhat agreeing that “environmental sustainability should be a core value of the NCPH.” Only 8.6 percent disagree. Those who strongly agree comprise the largest share of responses at 35.8 percent.

(The sum of the percentages exceeds 100 because respondents were asked to mark all that apply.)

Below are some additional comments from NCPH Sustainability Task Force members on the survey results.  We invite your thoughts as well!

  • As the survey results state, there is support for integrating environmental sustainability in public history practice. One of our key challenges will be to identify ways in which public history and practices related to sustainability–be it standards or education modules–can fit seamlessly into how public historians work. In doing so, and I believe the survey supports this, we will be able to support and educate our community on ways to preserve historic resources in the face of climate change.  ~ Priya Chhaya, National Trust for Historic Preservation
  • A new study of the link between perception and behavior, reported in the November 21, 2013, issue of Psychological Science, suggests that public historians may have a very important role to play in the collective search for environmental sustainability—and that our role should be rooted in doing what we do best, interpreting the past but doing so with a greater sense of purpose and more vigor. In 2012, Hal E. Hershfield (Stern School of Business, NYU), H. Min Bang (Fuqua School of Business, Duke), and Elke U. Weber (Dept. of Psychology, Columbia), devised two studies to test the hypothesis that perceived duration of a country’s existence (“political age”) would be positively related to that country’s environmental performance and also be positively related to pro-environmental behavior among individuals.  Although the article, “National Differences in Environmental Concern and Performance are Predicted by Country Age,” raises the usual number of questions about research design and methods, the researchers’ findings have intriguing implications.   The second study is particularly interesting.  Hershfield et al. found that participants who perceived that the United States had a long past were more likely to act in pro-environmental ways if they also felt connected to future generations.  The researchers are quick to conclude that “promot[ing] the country’s historic past…may effectively change long-term environmental behavior” and suggest that given “the urgency for greater environmental action in the face of anthropogenic climate change, interventions that highlight the shadow of the past may actually help illuminate the path to the future.”  ~ Rebecca Conard, Middle Tennessee State University
  • The survey’s suggestion that “a large number of respondents report that the relationship between public history and sustainability is unclear or that no such relationship exists” is a significant barrier.  While individuals seem supportive and concerned, I read this conclusion as there being a lack of “defining” or articulating the issue, which is indeed complex, multifaceted, and can be viewed from practical, emotional, ideological, political, and philosophical perspectives. This task, I believe, has hampered any movement towards synthesizing environmental and public history more pointedly than we have in the past to address pressing problems like the impact of climate change on cultural resources of public history practices.  The Task Force plans to recommend more cross-scholarship and cooperation among professional fields to examine this issue. The conference in Monterey will be a good start, followed by a special hybrid issue collaboration between The Public Historian and History@ Work.  ~ Leah Glaser, Central Connecticut State University
  • I’ve been thinking about this from a climate/environmental justice perspective.  When affluent nations such as the USA do not curb the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that they spew into the atmosphere, increasing the risk that violent storms devastate poorer nations like the Philippines, that’s an issue for public historians to raise with their audiences using the dialogical historical practices that we have developed.  ~ David Glassberg, University of Massachusetts at Amherst
  • The survey demonstrates the marked interest of public historians in issues of sustainability. The concerns I noted as most revealing in the survey include the need to respond to pressing environmental problems, to institutionalize sustainability with the public history field, to connect with the general public about the viability of historic preservation, and to provide better training for public historians. I would argue that one of the best ways to address these concerns is to begin “sustainability education” at the undergraduate level. By incorporating sustainability and environmental history into the undergraduate curriculum, public historians can raise awareness and begin training the next generation of practitioners right from the starting block. Indeed, this might be a generation for whom sustainable communities would be a “natural” fit. In this sense, we can foster the emergence of leaders who will lead the public history field toward a future in which sustainability is a core value.  ~ Melinda Marie Jetté, Franklin Pierce University
  • The issue of environmental sustainability is interesting because it impacts public historians in all points of their careers and all corners of the field. I was struck that 54 percent of respondents in the survey noted that their training in environmental sustainability derived from individual study or interest rather than formal education. What are they reading? I find that the amount of literature pertaining to history and sustainability is pretty sparse but building slowly. This White Paper will certainly bolster the literature, and I hope that it will be a foundation document for a larger collection of resources that public historians will be able to access and incorporate into their work. We need to catch up to our STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) colleagues who seem to be directing much of the conversation.   ~ Angela Sirna, Middle Tennessee State University and Catoctin Mountain Park

~ Will Ippen  is a PhD candidate in the Joint Doctoral Program in American History and Public History at Loyola University Chicago.

 

1 comment
  1. Cathy Stanton says:

    One of the most interesting things about the survey results for me was the fact that the respondents perceived themselves as being more concerned about environmental sustainability issues than their colleagues or employers were. I mentioned this finding at a conference on museums and climate change that I went to recently, and one of the other attendees said it mirrored the results of a multi-year study done by Climate Education Partners, San Diego on attitudes about climate change. In 2011, for example, nearly 80% of the randomly-selected respondents were concerned “a great deal” or “a moderate amount”, but they thought that only 14% of their neighbors and 24% of people in the city overall were a great deal or moderately concerned (more figures here).

    I initially thought that the similar NCPH findings reflected the fact that the people who filled out the survey were likely to be those who were already most engaged with these issues. But now I suspect there’s a broader pattern that has to do with keeping our concerns to ourselves rather than sharing them, which leads many people to feel isolated in their concern. If that’s what’s happening, it seems really significant, and suggests that we all need to be finding ways to talk about this much more!

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