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Contents and Introduction
Journal of the British Academy, Volume 13 Issue 1, Contents and Editors’ Introduction
Fiona Williams*†
,
J.F.Williams@leeds.ac.uk
Elizabeth Edwards‡
, Andrew Hadfield§
, Angela McRobbie¶
Abstract
The Editors introduce the first issue of Volume 13 of the Journal of the British Academy. This Introduction includes an overview of the content of the issue.
Keywords
social scienceshumanitiesartsinterdisciplinaryinnovativeinquiryContents
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Rachel Matthews
COMMENTARY
Thomas Hylland Eriksen, with a Foreword from Tim Ingold
CONVERSATION
Hew Locke, in conversation with Dawn Adès
THEMATIC COLLECTION
The critical role of governance for decarbonisation at pace: learning the lessons from SHAPE research
Edited by Sarah Birch, Hilary Graham, Andrew Jordan, Tim O’Riordan, and Henry Richards
FBAs Sarah Birch, Hilary Graham, Andrew Jordan, Tim O’Riordan, and Henry Richards
Stephen Hall, Anne Owen, Lucie Middlemiss, Mark Davis, and Ruth Bookbinder
Riyoko Shibe and Ewan Gibbs
Connor Smith
Jacob Ainscough, Liam Killeen, Pancho Lewis, Alfie Shepherd, and Rebecca Willis
CONVERSATION
David Olusoga, in conversation with Ritula Shah
THEMATIC COLLECTION
On recent closures and threats of closure in the Humanities and Social Sciences
Edited by Regenia Gagnier
Regenia Gagnier
John M.G. Barclay
Margot Finn
Charles Forsdick
Helen Beebee and Simon Kirchin
Jennifer Richards
PERSONAL REFLECTION
Avi Shlaim
Introduction
Welcome to the first issue of the relaunched Journal of the British Academy’s second year of publication. One of our aims for the relaunched Journal is ‘to sustain distinctive knowledge, which is necessary to inform political, social, cultural and global challenges of the present, to critically re-examine the past, and to shape the future’.
The contents of this issue rise to this aim with topics ranging across the Anthropocene, decarbonisation, migration, Gaza, Guyana, local journalism, and higher education closures. It is significant, as we enter the second quarter of the 21st century, how often the words ‘loss’, ‘decline’, ‘devastation’, ‘crisis’, and ‘closure’ recur in the contents. But our authors also use their distinctive knowledge to reflect on how future flourishing and recovery might be shaped.
The issue opens with Rachel Matthews’ research article ‘Assessing the contribution of local journalism: the local newspaper as accidental social infrastructure’. In recent years, there has been increasing concern about the concentration and consolidation of media power by large global corporations and a multitude of digital platforms. These have too often closed down local channels of news gathering and dissemination, subsuming the local into wider regional digital platforms, for instance, while swathes of local concern cease to be addressed through media outlets. Matthews addresses the structures underpinning this decline, but also discusses the increasing appreciation of the social goods that emerge from a strong sense of located local journalism, both analogue and digital. The work has developed in relation to the British Academy’s research and policy strand ‘Space for community: strengthening our social infrastructure’, part of the larger ‘Power to Change’ initiative.
The disappearance of what Matthews terms ‘legacy local newspapers’ creates ‘news deserts’, most often in already deprived areas, but it also destroys the sense of community identity, a local version of ‘print community’ perhaps, by which shared collective values acted as sites of cohesion. Matthews addresses the ways in which the perception and practices of provincial journalism have emerged as ‘accidental social infrastructure’, in that the existence of local journalism can engender goods such as greater participation in local democracy and emotional wellbeing. The article is written from a position of deep analytical engagement with the provincial newspaper, as a form of journalism, including oral history interviews, and including her own career as a journalist. Matthews suggests how local journalism can continue to shape and enhance beneficial communication and cohesion, in ways that direct and consolidate local collective memory, representing not only the circulation of current information, but also creating an important archival base (analogue and digital) for communities.
The commentary ‘Loss and recovery of diversity in the Anthropocene’ by Professor Thomas Hylland Eriksen is preceded by a moving personal tribute from Professor Tim Ingold FBA. The paper was given as the British Academy Radcliffe-Brown Lecture in Social Anthropology at Edinburgh University in April 2024. When we received the text, we sent it to peer reviewers who engaged enthusiastically and over many pages with the ideas. Sadly, Professor Eriksen was too ill to engage back. He died in November 2024. With permission from his widow, Kari Spjeldnaes, we have published the text of the lecture more or less as it was presented.
Building on his book, Overheating: An Anthropology of Accelerated Change (Pluto, 2016), Eriksen addresses ‘the acceleration of acceleration’ as part of the effects of the Anthropocene. This refers to the ways in which globalisation, expanding market economies, and state power have led to the standardisation and homogenisation of cultures at the same time as the human impact on the ecosystems has led to loss of biodiversity. The significance is that in both cases the effects are to render their systems more fragile and vulnerable, less open to changes which could restore flourishing to the planet and its inhabitants.
It is poignant that Eriksen takes as his starting point the posthumously published book by A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, A Natural Science of Society (Free Press, 1975), based on his last lectures to his students. The two anthropologists are theoretically and methodologically light years apart, but what they share is a focus on the connections between natural and human systems. Eriksen’s lecture is a call to anthropologists to expand the toolbox which enables ‘an understanding of humans as ecological beings’ in order to think about recovering diversity in both systems. The toolbox from which he derives inspiration is biosemiotics, the interdisciplinary reading of signs and exchange as part of non-human and human relational dynamics, which he uses to observe loss and recovery in these interconnected worlds.
The lecture ends with examples of resistance to loss of biodiversity and here Eriksen looks to the creolisation of cultures, language, religion, and food, and to the particular creation during the pandemic of the Creole Garden in the Seychelles. Parts of its aims are to recover knowledge, some forgotten but some continuing from slavery and after, in the horticultural and craft practices of Seychellois women. While this was set up as a survival strategy during the pandemic, it has become a longer-term alternative for self-sufficient recovery.
It is possibly not as widely known as it should be, that the British Academy has an important art collection, and acquires, when possible, work by noted contemporary British artists that, in broad terms, critically reflects the aims of the Academy’s work in humanities and social sciences in some way. The Academy recently acquired a major work, entitled Raw Materials 27, from the acclaimed Guyanese-British artist, Hew Locke. In an article extracted from a Conversation with Professor Dawn Adès FBA, Chair of the Academy’s Art Committee, Hew Locke describes the genesis, making, and, particularly, historical background to this piece. The artwork, illustrated in the article, embraces the complex layers of history, natural environment, (especially the sea), colonial exploitation, post-colonial experience, and his own biography in Guyana and in Britain, which informed the making of the work. Raw Materials 27 is worked in the multiple materials of collage, a process which fascinates Locke. As such it becomes the material expression of those cultural, historical, and political layers, as the multiple forms of layers of materials, from share certificates through photographs, to textiles, reflect the multilayered history of Guyana. The artwork now hangs on the elegant main staircase of the Academy’s refurbished building at 11 Carlton House Terrace.
The indispensable contribution of the social sciences and humanities to the challenges of climate change underpins the themed collection, The critical role of governance for decarbonisation at pace: learning the lessons from SHAPE research, edited by FBAs Sarah Birch, Andrew Jordan, Hilary Graham, Tim O’Riordan, and Henry Richards, Senior Policy Lead at the British Academy. The collection emerges out of work for the British Academy’s 2024 policy report Governance for Net Zero. In their Introduction the editors argue that the achievement of Net Zero involves much more than technological calculation; it is bound up in everyday social, cultural, and economic actions and decisions. Given that, in the UK, policymakers at every scale and devolved region are legally accountable for achieving Net Zero, social sciences and humanities research is essential for understanding what will and won’t work with their publics, as well as what constitutes a just and fair transition. The four articles in the collection dig deep into these questions and provide detailed pictures of successes and failures with clear sets of recommendations for transformative action.
The first article ‘Mission Led government or Radical Incrementalism for electricity and Net Zero?’ by Stephen Hall, Anne Owen, Lucie Middlemiss, Mark Davis, and Ruth Bookbinder addresses how to understand people’s decision making when it comes to the energy market. While the energy market assumes people are rational economic consumers who can respond to price incentives, their research finds that what matters to people is bound up in social relations of trust, friendship, and power. Through examples of policies to introduce solar energy and local policies to deal with energy poverty, they conclude that whether government is ‘Mission Led’ or ‘Radically Incrementalist’ is less significant than whether policymakers can apply an understanding of the reality of people’s choices in relation to their social, economic, and cultural conditions.
Riyoko Shibe and Ewan Gibbs’ case study, ‘The Grangemouth Oil Refinery closure: lessons for “Just Transition” governance’, similarly demonstrates the necessity of understanding how work histories and cultures hold communities together. In this case, power imbalances and competing interests between the global corporate owners and the Scottish and UK Governments obscured public needs and concerns. In particular, the failed objective of a just transition of skilled employees to equivalent jobs undermined community trust and consensus. The authors argue for the need for policymakers to coordinate, be transparent, and plan for the future.
A contrasting tale of success is told in Connor Smith’s case study of the introduction of hydrogen-fuelled public transport in Aberdeen. Although local in its implementation, one of the key features enabling success was that it was funded (EU Horizon) through a framework that encouraged national and international collaboration. Smith shows how this enabled the sharing of knowledge across scales while also driving a pathway to implementation which was suited to local needs. In its turn this created possibilities for local partnerships and stakeholders which established civil society support.
Creating the support of multiple publics for action towards net zero is one of the aims of ‘climate assemblies’, the subject of Jacob Ainscough, Liam Killeen, Pancho Lewis, Alfie Shepherd, and Rebecca Willis’s study. The authors consider how far climate assemblies at local and national levels have met this and other aims. They find that they have provided policymakers with knowledge of what people want and will support, and with legitimacy for their plans. However, trust fell away when the commissioning body failed to follow up with demonstrable action. The authors conclude with a set of creative suggestions for embedding them in local governance with more specific aims, more diverse methods, and greater accountability for action.
Drawing on his new work in the history of British emigration, Professor David Olusoga Hon FBA discusses the history of movement, of immigration and of emigration, with eminent journalist Ritula Shah. Emerging from the British Academy’s 2024 Summer Showcase, this Conversation addresses the matrix of assumptions around race, identity, public policy, immigration, imagination, and myth-making which feed into the understandings, and misunderstandings, of the history of Britain and of Empire. In particular, Professor Olusoga considers the ways in which both immigration and emigration were and continue to be, subject to the differential and shifting application of values, hierarchies, rights, and historical myopia in a complex of racial identity, politics, and legal definition. He argues that the ways in which British people emigrating within the British Empire were perceived as carriers and bulwarks of formative British values, becomes a revealing barometer of the processes and assumptions which entangle debates about race, identity, and Empire.
Following a day of Academy Fellows’ Panels dedicated to discussing the current crises in the university sector and especially the prospect of closures of courses and the reduction of provision, Professor Regenia Gagnier brings together for this volume some of the key contributions emerging from these panel talks. The thematic collection, On recent closures and threats of closure in the Humanities and Social Sciences is authored by five FBAs. In her introduction on ‘The state of the university: the university and the state’, Gagnier presents an overview which asks what are the role and purpose of our institutions of learning. She reflects on how the recent emphasis on marketisation, competition, and branding marks a deviation away from a public service ethos. This is followed by five papers which address the question of how universities might economise without losing essential aspects of education for a good society. Each paper reflects, from a different discipline, on specific issues and dilemmas as well as current strategies developed to support faculty posts and research in smaller units.
In the first contribution John Barclay, from the perspective of religious studies and theology, asks whether ‘smaller subjects can thrive when small is no longer beautiful’. He argues that small does not necessarily mean ‘weak’ and sets out three clear strategies to enable the sustainability of the discipline. Margot Finn’s intervention uses cutbacks in UK History departments as a lens to comment on, among other things, the bewildering opacity of budgets that faculty are often presented with as a rationale for cuts and savings to be made. She asks how student choice and the overall health of disciplines will be affected by the current changes.
Charles Forsdick, who is Lead Fellow for Languages at the British Academy, focuses on an area of concern that has been present in the Journal’s recent issues: language learning and the threats of closures to HEI (Higher Education Institution) departments. He gives an account of measures taken to expand language teaching provision away from the traditional European offerings. Of the many challenges faced, he argues that most urgent is a mismatch between institutional approaches to languages in HEI and the lack of any national strategy in this area.
Why philosophy departments have been particularly hard hit by the decline in university finances is the starting point for Helen Beebee and Simon Kirchin’s contribution. They describe how (‘modest’) innovative interdisciplinary programmes in teaching applied ethics to university science and medical students have helped maintain the viability of their philosophy department. Finally, Jennifer Richards, Chair of the English Association, explains how professional organisations (here working together with the Institute of English Studies and University English) can act as important advocates to HEIs in times of crisis. From this collaboration she provides ideas for departments at risk as to how to defend against closure and job losses using, for example, the current data on the wide range of skills and the emerging employment landscape in the UK.
Concluding the Journal’s content and continuing with the themes outlined in the first paragraph, Professor Avi Shlaim, FBA, contributes a personal reflection of the demolition of the infrastructure of learning in the recent war in Gaza. As Professor Shlaim points out in his article, the term ‘scholasticide’, meaning the ‘deliberate destruction of an educational system and its institutions’, was coined in Gaza after Operation Cast Lead (December 2008), the first major Israeli assault on the area. Shlaim shows that one of the most effective ways of silencing a people and preventing their ability to resist is to obliterate their means of learning and recording, so that they have no recourse to a shared past, the memory of a history, and, therefore, an understanding of future possibilities. As Shlaim demonstrates, the densely populated nature of the Gaza Strip has not only transformed it into an open prison for many of its inhabitants, but made it relatively easy to bombard its schools, further education institutions, and universities. Arguing that ‘genocide is intimately connected with scholasticide’, Shlaim urges the world not to turn a blind eye to this crucial infrastructural aspect of the devastating crisis engulfing Palestine and Israel.
We would like to thank our Editorial Board for their support and our constructive and insightful peer reviewers whose comments improve the quality of the articles. We are, as always, indebted to the Publishing Department of the British Academy for their combined experience, knowledge, and efficiency in producing the Journal. As the article-flow in the Journal rises, we especially thank them for their flexibility in discussions on future directions.
Cite
DOI: 10.5871/jba/013.a01
Published on: 17 March 2025
Volume: 13
Issue: Issue 1
Article view count: 580
Article download count: 26
Copyright statement
© The author(s) 2025. This is an open access article licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International LicenseCite this article
Williams, F., Edwards, E., Hadfield, A. & McRobbie, A. (2025), ‘Journal of the British Academy, Volume 13 Issue 1, Contents and Editors’ Introduction’, Journal of the British Academy, 13(1): a01 https://doi.org/10.5871/jba/013.a01Crossref
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Received
October 2022
Accepted
May 2023
Published
July 2023
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