The Australian History Industry
The twenty-six authors of The Australian History Industry have covered a breathtaking array of how history is produced in Australia. It is a useful introduction for graduate historians who might wish to work in the field and should prompt vibrant discussion between historians in all corners of the discipline … In particular, how can we further address the lack of knowledge and understanding by academic historians of the work professional historians are doing and have done for over three decades?
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the australian history industry
edited by paul ashton & paula hamilton | 2022
In twenty-two chapters divided into five parts, the twenty-six authors of The Australian History Industry have covered a breathtaking array of how history is produced in Australia. It is a useful introduction for graduate historians who might wish to work in the field and should prompt vibrant discussion between historians in all corners of the discipline.
Readers’ understanding of the industry will be somewhat skewed because of the imbalance of authors with academic appointments or affiliations compared to those without. Although considerable overlap exists among historians who work both in and out of academia, judging by the statistics provided at the end of the book – 395 members of the Professional Historians Association (PHA) and 517 staff members of academic institutions in Australia in 2020 – the work of PHA members is vastly under-represented in The Australian History Industry. Only chapters 2 (by Paul Ashton and Paula Hamilton), 17 (by Sue Hodges and Sharon Veale) and 20 (by Peter Hobbins) describe professional historians’ work in any detail. To highlight their work, I would have liked a sixth part. It could have incorporated those three chapters plus at least two others on oral history and commissioned history.
Nevertheless, PHA members will find several chapters especially thought-provoking.
Some of the contributors have provided useful summaries of a field of historical work and a historiographical overview. Chapter 16 by Margaret Cook on environmental history is one example. Other chapters explore ‘hot topics’ that have lent history a resurgent populism and relevance during the last decade: Chapter 3 by Paul Kiem on the school history curriculum, Chapter 8 by Alison Atkinson-Phillips on monuments, Chapter 12 by Peter Stanley on the Australian War Memorial, Chapter 15 by Meg Foster on Covid-19 and Chapter 19 by Fiona Cameron on the history wars, are among these.
Several interesting themes emerge from reading this book. At least six authors note and encourage history’s ties to and role in activism. As Michelle Arrow remarked in Chapter 11: ‘History is important for understanding how oppression is embedded in our institutions and our imaginations. But it can also provide inspiration to fire activism in the present’.
Three authors wrote on the theme of the possibilities of digital history-making. But we must also beware the ‘digital abyss that dooms so many post-1990s primary sources’, writes Peter Hobbins. As Tim Sherratt notes: ‘Histories of the 1990s or beyond will need to make use of web archives. Increasingly, personal and government archives will be born digital.’ Graduate and postgraduate historians must be taught explicitly how to access such records. I wonder, though, about digital complacency. Historians must not become lazy and only use digital records – even if they exist. During the last decade I’ve initiated many conversations with archivists at private institutions who have collected few, if any, digital records, such as email and social media, which we know have supplanted almost all traditional forms of correspondence. There is a cavernous and growing gap in our primary source materials.
These silences are being filled, in part, with oral histories – another notable theme that emerges in The Australian History Industry. Professional historians have long employed this methodology and are using oral histories in books, podcasts, exhibitions, websites, and to help organisations build or complement an archive.
Oral history-making also promotes collaboration with each community and organisation with which we work. Collaboration is the cornerstone of professional historians’ practice. As Tanya Evans puts it in Chapter 21: ‘Collaboration is a political project for many public historians like me’. Yet some academic historians in this book seem to be unaware of this or are only beginning to recognise the benefits of and call for more collaboration, probably because of lingering suspicion about or hostility to the new field of professional and public history that snowballed in Australia from the late 1980s. This is described by the editors, Paul Ashton and Paula Hamilton, in Chapter 2.
Much more could have been made of the inherent nature of collaborative history-making between those historians who are PHA members and who work daily with clients and communities. They collaborate not only through oral history but also in the discursive management of who should be interviewed, who reads and assesses written drafts of manuscripts, who curates the choices of images or items in exhibitions, and what should be included or left out. Experienced professional historians are competent in guiding and leading a commissioning institution through the steps needed to make these decisions together. Together we have a responsibility to educate the public on the difference between history and marketing, and about the manifold benefits of a fearless historical lens.
Certain chapters stood out for me as eloquent or thought-provoking. Chapter 4 by Matthew Richardson, about publishing, includes some challenging remarks about academic history writing: ‘university-trained historians are difficult to publish … few historians today have any idea of literary style’. Michelle Arrow reminds us that all historians should seek contemporary touchstones to capture their audiences and remain relevant. Frank Bongiorno’s piece on politicians’ use of the past (Chapter 14) is possibly the most poised and fluently written section of the book. It’s a shame it doesn’t draw any overt connections to the book’s themes. Journalist Paul Daley, in Chapter 18, writes in a lively and engaging manner about the age-old tensions between historians and journalists.
I found Chapter 17, by Sue Hodges and Sharon Veale, to be particularly thought-provoking. I urge you to read it. Why should an Australian and New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification code be the only marker of whether or not history is recognised as a profession? Is ‘most public history in Australia’ really ‘simplified academic history rather than history created with the public in mind or co-created with First Nations people, historical societies and community groups’? Many PHA members work precisely in this way and the Victorian Community History Awards, for example, recognise annually the diverse range of excellent public history-making. Pleasingly, the authors’ lament for the demise of government-appointed historians has been recognised by PHA (Vic & Tas) and enshrined, in 2022, in its strategic plan as a goal to advocate for the appointment of historians at state, city and local council levels. Although the lack of historians at all levels of government in Australia has not precluded their extensive work in all levels of the community, it seems obvious that now, more than ever, our politicians and government administrators would benefit from deeper engagement with historians on contested histories and social crises.
Despite the disappointingly high number (over 90) of typos, errors of syntax and spelling, and other mistakes that would easily have been ironed out by a copyeditor, this book is worthy of your consideration. Some chapters could be considered by book groups during 2023.
Certain points should be taken up by PHAs around the country and perhaps even aired at our national conference in Adelaide during September 2023. In particular, how can we further address the lack of knowledge and understanding by academic historians of the work professional historians are doing and have done for over three decades?
The Australian History Industry is published by Australian Scholarly Publishing.
Reviewer: Helen Penrose, PHA (Vic & Tas)