Showing papers in "The Public Historian in 1986"

Business in Time: The Historian and Corporate Culture

Abstract: THE RECENT BOOM in the concern with corporate culture is itself a telling cultural phenomenon. It is a response to the prolonged economic recession that began in 1973; the challenge of intense foreign competition, in particular from Japan; the loss of American superiority in technological implementation; and, above all, the spectre of economic decline confronting the United States. The problems of American industry provoked widespread dissatisfaction with conventional managerial practices and strategies. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the preoccupation with Japanese management. The recognition of the role of values in Japan's economic success inspired new awareness of the cultural dimension of economic life. The advent of postindustrial society revealed that industrial models of organization are historical constructs rather than inevitable structures. Corporate culture has also attracted

Archivists and Public Historians in the United States

Abstract: ARCHIVISTS AND PUBLIC HISTORIANS face similar challenges, and their fields share common origins. Both disciplines are evolving and, by most standards, neither yet constitutes a profession.1 Public history, little more than a decade old, was born primarily because of declining employment options for academic historians, and public historians still lack a consensus about their own mission. Though archivists have a much better developed professional identity (the Society of American Archivists is celebrating its golden anniversary this year), they do not control entry into their field, lack well-defined educational standards, and are weak in theory supporting their work. They also seem confused about their own identity. Are they historians, public historians, librarians, information specialists, or archivists pure and simple? Given their similar problems, archivists and public historians are not working together as closely as they should. This essay describes the possible relationship, and the benefits, of a stronger working accord between archivists and public historians. It is not surprising that archivists and public historians are often wary or uncertain of each others' intentions. Given their common origins and related missions, however, the two groups can meet some of their own professional goals by focusing upon mutual concerns. Archivists and public historians should jointly work for the identification, preservation, and management of America's documentary heritage, for the promotion of the practical value of historical knowledge to address contemporary social issues and problems, and for resolution of similar professional

Uses and Misuses of History in the Debate over Immigration Reform

Abstract: Barbara, Dr. Otis Graham is a member of the board of directors of (FAIR), the Federation for American Immigration Reform, and has been active in the population and environment movement for some time. His essay on the \"Uses and Misuses of History\", reprinted from The Public Historian, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Spring 1986), and (c) 1986 by the National Council on Public History, gives us the impetus and theme for this special issue of THE SOCIAL CONTRACT.

Federal Historians: Ethics and Responsibility in the Bureaucracy

Abstract: A FREE EXCHANGE OF INFORMATION is vital to the functioning of a democratic society. Both as citizens and historians, federal historians have a vested interest in preserving and contributing to that exchange. To some extent, consequently, they are institutional mavericks in any bureaucratic setting. Their desire is to gather, analyze, and communicate sufficient information to portray an accurate picture of events. However, the managers of government agencies may wish to limit the exchange of information for a variety of often justifiable reasons. There is then an inherent tension in the relationship between historians and senior officials. In light of this, it is no small wonder how many genuinely first-class "official" histories have been written. Indeed, the occasional story of historians denied access to information for unconvincing reasons must be put in perspective: federal historians enjoy access to an overwhelming amount of information in archives and official files.

The Public Historian and Business History: A Question of Ethics

Abstract: IN RECENT YEARS historians have changed their attitude toward business history, as a field for research but particularly in terms of new kinds of employment, partly in response to scholarly evaluation of the role of business in society and partly as the result of declining opportunities for academics who wish to teach. But this growing interest in business history, especially as evidenced by business's support for research, has spurred an interest in the ethical issues involved. Undoubtedly ethical problems exist for the historian at large, just as they do for any other professional. The problem is to identify the particular ethical problems of business history for the public historian. Within public history (of which business history is just one part), this issue has often been raised, even if not so often satisfactorily answered. Two articles from The Public Historian, written from quite different perspectives, illustrate the profession's concern. In the Summer 1981 issue, which was devoted to the theme, "Business and History," Albro Martin, discussing the emerging position of the corporate historian, asked: "For whom is the corporate historian working?" Martin's context was administrative, and his answer was pragmatic: "Like all staff people, historians will have to find out for themselves, in the end, for whom they are working.'"' In the Winter 1982 issue, Terrence O'Donnell's "Pitfalls Along the Path of Public History" appeared. From a survey of back issues of The Public Historian, O'Donnell detected a common theme: "History is usable and must be sold." The problem, he argued,

The Public Historian as Advocate: Is Special Attention to Professional Ethics Necessary?

Abstract: THE RAPID RISE OF PUBLIC HISTORY and the concomitant entry of professional academic historians and academically trained historians into nonacademically sponsored research has repeatedly raised the question of whether the professional ethics that govern academic scholars adequately guide adjudication of ethical situations in the public arena. My original opinion on this question was that the differences between the academic and nonacademic scholarly enterprises were minor, and, consequently, any ethical problems deriving from these differences were adequately met by the ethical codes of the various public history associations, such as the Society of American Archivists and the American Association of Museums. Recently, however, my opinion has shifted. In this paper, I argue that academic scholarly ethics are inadequate in principle as well as in major practical ways for governing scholarship in the public arena. Driven by this conclusion, I present a program of ethical concerns for the profession to deliberate, and recommend special attention to professional ethics.

Disability insurance and the limits of American history.

Abstract: ALTHOUGH THE ADDITION of disability insurance to the Social Security program in 1956 makes for colorful drama, the event also reveals the limitations of political history and of recent radical interpretations of social security. Historians who wish to be of use to policymakers need to develop interpretations of disability insurance, and of other recent social welfare laws, that do justice to their complexity. This essay dissects the conventional interpretation and reveals the analytic and historiographic gaps between disability insurance as policymakers view it and disability insurance as historians portray it. A word needs to be said about the nature of what we refer to as the "conventional" historiography of disability insurance. For the most part, this literature subsumes disability insurance under other headings; it does not comment on disability insurance directly. Instead, it consists of political chronicles of the expansion of the Social Security Act (1935) to cover new risks such as disability and ill health. Historians therefore tend to view disability insurance as an artifact of the New Deal or as an example of the social reform process in modern America. Other strains of writing link disability insurance with the concepts of retirement, the nation's treatment of its older citizens, or its continuing struggle against poverty. Few historians have concentrated on disability insurance itself. On the other hand, disability insurance has attracted a great deal of attention as a topic of academic inquiry. Although historians do not write about it, political scientists, sociologists, and economists refer frequently to the history of disability insurance. Martha Derthick, a political scientist, has written a seminal book on social security in which she uses

A Perspective on American Archives

Abstract: THIS ARTICLE discusses some of the main features of archival conditions in the United States. It reviews important developments during the past ten years, describes several recent studies of archival affairs, and suggests factors that may underlie current conditions. It is written from the perspective of an archivist interested primarily in the mission of the archival community, i.e. to ensure the identification, preservation, and use of records of enduring value. This is not the same as the mission of the public history community, which, as recently adopted by the National Council on Public History, is "to promote the utility of history in society through professional practice." Successful efforts toward either mission, however, will tend to contribute to the other, and this article can help build a clearer context within which archivists and public historians can work more effectively together. Given their overlapping memberships, cooperation and mutual understanding between these two communities should be relatively easy-as well as desirable.'

Does He Who Pays the Piper Call the Tune? Historians, Ethics, and the Community

Abstract: SEVERAL YEARS AGO, at my first public history conference, two successful public historians offered testimony as to how they had "made it" in the real world. The first, a historian for a large private corporation, began by offering an account of the wonderful contributions his company had made to mankind over the century or so that it had been in existence. He then proceeded to describe his role in collecting and interpreting materials relevant to the company's development. The second speaker, also a corporate historian, discussed his role as a company speech writer. His primary function was to extract from corporate records historical material for executives to use in their public speeches. Although I had been employed as a historian in the public sector for several years, and was a strong advocate of historians' participation in the community, I was troubled by the advocacy approach to history maintained by the two speakers. While none of us can be totally objective and free from cultural biases, it appeared to me and to several colleagues in the audience that both of the speakers had undermined their credibility as historians. Four years and several dozen conferences later, my concerns over the potential for conflict of interest for historians, both in the public and private sectors, has not diminished. To the contrary, many of my colleagues in museums, historic preservation agencies, private companies, and contracting firms regularly face critical ethical conflicts. Some agonize over these decisions, while others dismiss them as irrelevant and go about their business. Curiously, the two principal dangers faced by public historians reflect the experiences articulated by the two speakers

Historians and Their Employers: A Perspective on Professional Ethics

Abstract: lot of unethical people laboring in the public history vineyards There are hired guns out there, they reason, and a code is needed to assure that their pistols remain holstered I coauthored the NCPH code, but not because I think the profession is overburdened with dishonest practitioners On the contrary, in my experience the overwhelming majority are dedicated and honest people who do not need a code to keep them on the straight and narrow Nevertheless, the code of ethics is important because it will help public historians fashion healthy professional relationships that the historical profession can respect The foregoing statement presupposes that it is important for public and academic historians to maintain mutual professional respect, and that scholastic notions about academic freedom may not fit easily into the marketplace environment It is important for public historians to be part of a larger professional group that trains practitioners and produces research that we can apply in our work Moreover, it is satisfying to belong to a wider community of scholars, because we all engage in intellectual work regardless of differences in our respective workplaces While it may be argued that academic critics are not well informed about public history, their misgivings are not altogether unwarranted After all, the historian's purpose is an objective investigation and explanation of the past In academe a system of peer review ostensibly holds

Attempts at National Planning for Archives in Canada, 1975-1985

Abstract: PRIOR TO THE 197oS, archives in Canada existed impecuniously in isolation one from another somewhere in the shadows of Canadian society. Although the federal government established the Public Archives of Canada in 1872, and over the next hundred years all the provincial governments, many universities, some churches and businesses, and a few public libraries and museums founded repositories for archival materials, before the 1970s archives and archivists made little impact on policymakers in the cultural field. Indeed, before 1970 there was little concrete evidence of a sense of community of interest among Canadian archivists, let alone among the archives for which they worked. Over the past decade, however, a series of events combined to transform the outlook and, to a lesser extent, the situation of archives and archivists in Canada. In the process, governments and their cultural arms came for the first time to grapple with the collective problems and needs of the archival community. In retrospect, the changes that have occurred may be seen to represent a watershed in the development of Canadian archives. Led by the youthful and vigorous group of archivists who joined the staffs of archives in the expansionary 1960s and 1970s, the archival community began to perceive itself as sharing a collective mission to promote the broadest possible preservation of the country's archival record. Given the longstanding penury of archival institutions, much debate ensued about the means necessary to the end of preserving and exploiting the nation's archival documentary heritage. What began as an exercise in describing the state of archives and their need for greater financial support slowly evolved into a search for a structure in which to set about planning the orderly development of hitherto isolated and often

The Professionalization of Historical Research in the Ontario Department of Crown Lands and Its Successors

Abstract: IN A PROVOCATIVE ARTICLE entitled "The Tradition of Public History in Canada," John English suggested that, while there are more historians now working for the Canadian federal government than ever before, those historians were specialists rather than generalists. As a result, he indicated that the tradition of the generalist in the Public Service of Canada was gone and that simultaneously "the usefulness of [historical] skills in deciding what a government must do was no longer much respected. The past belonged to history, but not much else did. An honourable tradition had died."' The situation of historians in the federal government of Canada, however, was, according to other historians, much more complex than that. Colonel C.P. Stacey in A Date with History, Memoirs of a Canadian Historian has shown that, because of the exigencies of World War II, there was a separate and yet parallel development, that of the "official historian" and his staff of specialists, within the federal government. Their task was to write the history of Canada's participation in that war.

The Public Historian in Human Resource Development and Management

Abstract: NOW THAT THE PUBLIC HISTORY MOVEMENT has advanced beyond its earlier fascination with the application of public history techniques to the more traditional roles of historians as archivists, curators, preservationists, editors, and writers of official and unofficial corporate and institutional histories,' "the potential," as the authors of the report of the long-range planning committee to the National Council on Public History have pointed out, "is as yet unknown."2 One reason for this is that historical analysis still remains a neglected management tool.3 While public historians ought to be encouraged by the emphasis, in the bestselling book In Search of Excellence, on the promotion of corporate culture, they should also be asking how their particular skills could have been used in its production. Certainly the conclusions drawn from the