Rethinking History

Rethinking History

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  Rethinking History: An ANTi-HistoryPerspective Albert J. Mills Saint Mary’s University
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  Learning from History •“Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it” – Winston Churchill • `Those who fail to learn from the ontological status of history are doomed to reproduce its myths’ – Weatherbee, Durepos, Mills & Helms Mills 2012.
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  Self Reflections onthe Past • Capitalism threatened humanity – from Vietnam to Cuba to Chile • Marxism – offered hope for human kind – with science, (dialectical) materialism, evidence of global revolutionary struggle and, above all, history • Historical materialism provided a scientific glimpse into the future based on an unfolding past of class struggle.
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  Self Reflections onthe Past • Marxism in practice came with its nightmares as well as its visions – Stalinism, State Socialism, Show Trials, etc. All justified in the name of history. • Capitalism also had history as truth on its side – as McCarthyism persecuted people for their Un-American attitudes. • History, it seems, can be bad for you!
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  The Cold Waras Intellectual Context • It has been argued that (today’s) management and organization studies (MOS) – and supporting history were shaped by the aftermath of WWII and the Cold War era (Kelley, Mills & Cooke, 2006). Producing a field that is dominated by underlying Western philosophies (specifically US), that are managerialist, realist, male centred, business oriented, etc. In many ways imbued with the historical values of American exeptionalism and liberal progressivism.
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  Towards the callfor the `Historic Turn’ • The development of the field has over the years been supported by engagement with history (e.g., Urwick, 1938, 1963; Chandler, 1977, 1979), the production of histories (e.g., George, 1968, 1972; Wren, 1972, 1979), and the establishment of associated scholarly communities (e.g., the establishment of the MH Division of the AoM in the early 1970s).
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  The Historic Re-Turn •Yet, as early as 1979 Burrell & Morgan were characterizing the field as ahistorical. • Call for an `historic turn’ in MOS (Kieser, 1994; Booth & Rowlinson, 2006) address the overly ahistorical character of the field today (Burrell & Morgan, 1979) - various critiques of MOS for ignoring context, historical development, presentism, scientifism, universalism, and philosophies of history and the methods of historiography.
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  The Historic Re-Turn •The call for the historic turn was in part a call for attention to the role of the past in MOS; in part a call for a reintegration of management theory/history with the humanities and the social sciences (Kieser, 1994); and in part an alignment with the narrative and discursive turns in MOS and greater consideration of the role of critical organizational history (Booth & Rowlinson, 2006).
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  Approaches to Historyin MOS Factual (Wren): the past consists of a number of events that can help us make sense of the present and the future. We can make cognitive decisions based on history. Contextual (Kieser): the past is embedded in a number of contextual factors that influence how we experience/make sense of things in the present.
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  Approaches to Historyin MOS • Methodological (Booth & Rowlinson): a focus on the methodological framing of the past can help us to understand the representation of theories of organization. • Epistemic (Durepos & Mills): a focus on how history is produced can help us to understand the production of (organizational) knowledge.
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  Five Insights forCritical Historiography
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  The past-as-history • ThePast in ontologically unobtainable and can only be re-presented by history (Munslow, 2010). • `the past-as-history’ is where representations of the past are legitimized as history (because they are of the past) and the past becomes real or true because it is viewed through history.
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  Conflation and Discourse •Performance of the past-as-history (and its legitimizing role) (Jenkins, 2003) can be viewed as discursive – a set of powerful practices legitimized through powerful ideas constituted as history.
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  History as Discourse •History is arguably a powerful discourse in itself – a means of arbitrating knowledge of the past as well as, in its performance of various aspects of `the past’ (i.e., histories) stands as specific knowledge of what happened before now. • As such the past and history obfuscate their discursive roots
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  Knowledge of thePast-History as Actor-network effects • The question is not so much what is a true account of the past so how as how such (potentially multiple) accounts are produced. • Discursive behaviour and thought processes are arguably linked to powerful practices that generate knowledge/power (Foucault, 1979). • This suggests that for the politics of liberation we need to unmask than simply debate History, revealing the socio-politics of its production.
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  Critical approaches andHistory • Struggle, change and identities rely on history and reference to what happened in the past. • How do we proceed if we have no reference points between the past and the present? • How do we develop and relay stories of oppression and change? • At the very least how do we deal with ahistorical accounts of managing and organizing?
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  Critical approaches andHistory • From an ANTi-History perspective we still have our stories, narrative and tales. History is at best a recounting and analysis of those accounts. They are not real in the sense that they capture the essence of what actually happened. They are not false because they `reveal’ the stories that people live by. The stories should not be ignored in accounts of organizational events nor in struggles against oppression. Finally, they should not be used as arbiters of truth that become new forms of oppression.