HISTORY, HERITAGE AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT:
A POSITION STATEMENT ON THE
SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS
S. KARLY KEHOE AND CHRIS DALGLISH
History, sustainable development, historical justice
In 2015 the United Nations adopted the seventeen Sustainable Development
Goals (SDGs).1 These objectives – which include ‘End poverty in all its forms
everywhere’, ‘Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full
and productive employment and decent work for all’ and ‘Reduce inequality
within and among countries’ – form a deliberately ambitious agenda for the next
fifteen years. The aim is to deliver a more balanced approach to development,
leading to a more just and sustainable society. The SDGs’ motto is ‘leaving no one
behind’,2 and for these Goals to be met there will need to be a dramatic reshaping
of the ways in which we – all of us, around the world – interact with each other
and with the environment. There is no doubt that the SDGs are big picture stuff,
but the state of the planet and of our societies means that they have to be.
Sustainable development has the purpose of satisfying human need and
improving quality of life, particularly where the need is great.3 To be sustainable,
development must come from within (which is a question of empowering and
enabling people to address their own needs), it must serve future generations as
well as those in the present and it must attend, at one and the same time, to
the vitality of culture, society, the economy and the environment (which means
foregoing single-interest approaches to development which focus exclusively on
one or other of these ‘pillars’). These principles have value in relation to thinking
about the future development of the rural world and everyone who depends
on it for their wellbeing and survival, whether in Scotland or elsewhere. It
is critical that people appreciate the urgent need for action to deliver on the
SDGs and for thinking creatively about the role we all might play in that.
We believe that historical research has a vital contribution to make, especially
if undertaken collaboratively by challenging and transcending the boundaries
Northern Scotland 9, 2018, 1–16
DOI: 10.3366/nor.2018.0142
© Edinburgh University Press 2018
www.euppublishing.com/nor
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between disciplines and between professional researchers, communities and the
organisations which serve and work with them. Enquiry into the past is a crucial
part of enabling communities, in all their shapes and sizes, to develop in sustainable
ways. This idea is at the core of Landscapes and Lifescapes, a collaborative project
which explores the ways in which plantation slavery in the Caribbean influenced
the development of Highlands and Islands communities at home and abroad. This
project has also been the impetus behind this special issue of Northern Scotland
which uses present-day questions of historical justice to prompt new thinking
about actions for a more just and sustainable future.4
Historical enquiry delivers insights into the world in which we live and it
informs action both to overcome the negative legacies of the past and to harness
the positive potential of heritage as a means of making the world different
in the future. Evidence of how history and culture have been or should be
harnessed to promote sustainability in remote and rural communities is mounting.
A recent report delivered to the House of Commons Scottish Affairs Committee
highlighted the important role that the region’s unique history and culture
has played in improving the prospects of Highland communities through inmigration, entrepreneurship and local enterprise.5 There are echoes of this kind
of activity across the Atlantic in Canada. In Newfoundland, for example, the
creation of an ‘Irish loop’, which is a ‘ribbon of highway’ extending south from
the provincial capital, St John’s, around the tip of the Avalon peninsula offering
visitors a route through the heartland of Irish diasporic culture, is changing how
local people think about and share their traditions and culture.6 Similarly, in
neighbouring Nova Scotia, and in spite of the exploitation of all things Scottish,
the Now or Never: An Urgent Call to Action for Nova Scotians report of 2014 warned
that lessons needed to be learned from history to avoid ‘significant and prolonged
decline’.7
Investigating the historic links that existed between the Scottish Highlands
and the Caribbean, for example, can aid understanding of the character and
consequences of previous development in rural areas in both regions and inform
future development which seeks to tackle injustices and change unsustainable
ways of living. Over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
many Highlanders, like their Lowland Scottish, English, Irish, French, Spanish,
Portuguese and Dutch counterparts, looked to the Caribbean and to its systems
of plantation slavery as a way of enhancing their personal wealth and of securing
the prosperity of their families and of their ‘home’ Highland communities. While
many failed in their quest for riches, ending up financially ruined, emotionally
broken or dead from one of a number of tropical diseases, there were also
many who achieved extraordinary success and who, on the basis of wealth,
knowledge and experience acquired in the colonies, acted to transform the lives
of communities and landscapes ‘back home’ in the Highlands.8
Researchers in Scotland, England and the Caribbean are working to
understand the legacies of Britain’s involvement in transatlantic slavery, adding
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History, Heritage and Sustainable Development
depth and detail to the story and underlining the conclusion, which is absolutely
clear, that this activity was not sustainable because, at its most fundamental level,
it depended upon the exploitation of human beings.9 That such an egregious
system existed at all should force us to think more carefully about the choices we
make now and about how we can deliver genuinely just and sustainable solutions
to the challenges we face today – just and sustainable not just for ourselves and
the communities and landscapes of which we are a part but also for other people
and places around the world. Furthermore, it is important to recognise that the
link here between past and present is not simply an indirect one, with the past
serving as an allegory for the present; it is also very much a direct link. Past
action and processes have resulted in present-day legacies and ongoing effects. The
legacies of historic Highland-Caribbean entanglement are evident on both sides
of the Atlantic. On the Highland side, colonially-generated economic and social
capital, goods and knowledge played a fundamental role in the transformation
of relationships between people, land and the environment and, through that
transformation, shaped the present.
The British imperial environment, which Scots constructed in partnership
with the English and Welsh, and later, Irish, was instrumental in defining
the development of modern Britain and the modern Scottish nation. After
1700, Scotland experienced an almost complete transformation that was at once
political, as Scotland settled into a parliamentary union with England and Wales;10
economic, as it began to access a rapidly-expanding imperial economy;11 and
cultural, as Scottish communities were transformed at home and transplanted
abroad.12 All of Scotland’s rural landscapes were affected by this, including those in
the Highlands where the changes to ways of life and ways of living were profound.
Government intervention in the form of road and bridge building, direct military
action, estate confiscation and language erosion combined with an intense focus,
among a new landlord class, on cash rents, enclosed tracts, intensive sheep farming
and deer forests, to transform Highland life. This transformation was one which
affected people’s lives and the landscape in connected ways.
Today, the Highlands is a region renowned for its landscapes of outstanding
beauty and for its seeming wildness, but the character of these landscapes is, as
much as anything else, a result of the changes which have taken place over the last
few hundred years: the Highlands represents a little over 30% of Scotland’s total
land mass but accommodates just 3.4% of the population, making the region one
of the least-populated in the whole of Europe.13 The apparent emptiness of the
Highlands, though, is a legacy of the region’s history, rather than a fact of nature,
and the belief that Highland landscapes are ‘wild’ is a contested one, not held by
all. To understand how this apparent ‘wild’ emptiness came about, it is important
to move beyond any notion that the Highlands were peripheral and cut-off from
the globalising world of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with its longdistance flows of people, goods, ideas and ideologies. The Highlands were neither
isolated nor disconnected from the wider world. Allan Macinnes and Andrew
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Mackillop, historians born and raised in the Highlands and Islands, note the effects
that industrialisation and land-ownership changes had on Highland communities
and how this encouraged a deeper engagement with international activities
such as military campaigns, trade and banking.14 James Hunter’s work is also
instructive. A historian, journalist and life-long land reform advocate originally
from Argyllshire, Hunter’s exploration of the socio-cultural consequences of
people’s changing relationship with landownership highlights the growing divide
between the land owners and occupiers, the legacy of community fragmentation
and the ways in which Highland communities re-established themselves abroad.15
For many like Hunter, significant progress has been made in recent decades,16
but the wounds are nonetheless still raw, the past intrudes in significant ways into
the present and historical injustices have yet to be fully resolved. In this context, it
is clear to see that the survival and fortunes of many rural communities have long
been connected with and, in some ways, determined by their global connections.
This is something that we need to pay more attention to – a consideration
which is, by no means, unique to the Scottish Highlands. Other places are also
grappling with the modern challenges associated with globalisation and a United
Nations-sponsored report about the potential for higher education to contribute
to improving the state of Spain’s rural communities is particularly insightful:
As things stand now, the rural world can no longer be considered to be either
a productive system or an isolated system. The penetration, to a greater or
lesser degree, of globalizing and urban rationales in rural areas has given rise to
profound changes in their economic, social and institutional structure.17
We would dispute the idea that the rural world was ever ‘an isolated system’ but,
nonetheless, reports like this one should be a reality check for those who see
the rural world as some kind of mysterious, distant and disconnected place; as a
world of wild or marginal landscapes which somehow exist outside of modernity;
or simply as a place to be managed, used or enjoyed for external purposes, not
as a matter of communities and landscapes with their own needs and their own
internal logic concerning development for the future. Reports such as the one
quoted above represent a call to arms, so to speak, for those of us who understand
that research – especially collaborative research – can offer specific insights into the
connections between globalisation and sustainability in the rural world.
The Sustainable Development Goals provide a real and very exciting
opportunity for research into history, heritage and historical justice (the latter
two terms referring to the present-day legacies of the past), in terms of the
framework they provide for realising much more fully the present-day and future
relevance of engagement with the past. Poverty, the unsustainable exploitation of
land and its associated resources, persistent out-migration, uncertainty over land
ownership and chronic unemployment are major present-day challenges which
all have complex genealogies stretching back through time. The past is a part
of the problem, but it is also part of the solution because working to know
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History, Heritage and Sustainable Development
the history of present-day challenges and learning to harness the potential of
heritage as a resource for and medium of development builds people’s capacity for
action. Consequently, what we have tried to do with the Landscapes and Lifescapes
project is engage directly with this by focusing on questions of historical justice
that develop and expand our understanding of problematic and conflicted pasts.
We are, by no means, the first people to think of this, but our angle is both
substantially new and difficult. The past we consider is the one linking Scottish
Highlanders with African slaves and plantation slavery in the Caribbean, links
which contributed to the social, economic and physical transformation of the
Highlands and Islands in the eighteenth and early-to-mid nineteenth centuries.
Historical research, here, is a kind of ‘truth telling’ and although the process is
often painful it is necessary for building more just and sustainable futures. One
need only look to Canada for stark evidence of this fact. The mandate of the
landmark Truth and Reconciliation Commission is to engage directly with the
Indian Residential School legacy as a way of offering a ‘sincere indication and
acknowledgment of the injustices and harms experienced by Aboriginal peoples
and the need for continued healing’ as a way to move on.18
Collaboration for the rural world
Historical research and heritage research, when linked to action promoting
community development, have the potential to make a transformative
contribution to delivery against the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Just as all
nations have a responsibility for taking this agenda forward, so too do researchers
(as citizens of the world with a particular skill set and knowledge base which can
be put to good use). In order to make the potential contribution of research a
reality in this context, there needs to be a willingness to exercise openness and to
engage in genuine, meaningful and long-lasting partnerships. It is a good time for
this because, if we are prepared to allow for a silver lining in the reality of today’s
tough economic climate, then the pressure being put on increasingly limited
resources means that researchers are being pushed to collaborate with each other
and with public, private- and third-sector organisations and with communities.
The changing research environment is presenting researchers with new challenges
and with often hitherto-unexplored opportunities. The situation in which we
find ourselves, at this moment in time, should be pushing us to be more creative
with the research we do and more proactive in ensuring its societal relevance
and contribution, and this is no bad thing. It is imperative that researchers take
advantage of the opportunities which are presenting themselves for collaboration
in the interests of delivering benefits for society.
Scotland’s geographic make-up means that the rural landscape will need to
feature strongly in discussions about the SDGs. The country’s rural communities
have long struggled with a loss of capacity and autonomy, intimately connected
with a loss, both perceived and real, of control over the past and the future. These
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S. Karly Kehoe and Chris Dalglish
losses have been driven by factors such as out-migration, communication and
technology-access challenges, the domination of the fortunes of the many by
the interests of the few (not least the external interests of absentee landowners,
businesses, governmental and non-governmental organisations) and the grand and
sometimes unreasonable expectations of the Highland Diaspora. In the Scottish
Highlands, such issues have been live for centuries and their effects on people have
long been the subject of memory, research and debate.19 Yet, even during periods
of acute socio-economic turmoil, demographic change and cultural transition
and in highly constrained circumstances, the people of the Highlands were never
simply passive; they have demonstrated and continue to demonstrate significant
active agency.20 This agency, the exercise of which has, historically, had both
positive and negative outcomes for the Highlands and for other communities
and places around the world, has tended to be overlooked, drowned out by metanarratives of passivity and victimhood.21 This process of historical forgetting or
memory suppression has undermined the ability of many in the here-and-now to
take full control of their situation.
In reclaiming their history and in repopulating the past with active fellow
humans, people today can gain confidence, strengthen or heal relationships with
each other and identify, actively address and hopefully overcome, the harmful
legacies of the past. The material and non-material inheritance which the past
has bequeathed us is a resource. Taking charge of and reinterpreting the past is
an important part of working to realise historical justice, of allowing the truth (or
truths) of the present situation to be brought to the surface and understood, and
of providing a more solid platform for overcoming persistent injustices. This kind
of thinking is already on the table for many researchers, as revealed by Carnegie
UK’s report InterAction: How can academic and the third sector work together to influence
policy and practice? In addition to offering sage advice on how to move forward
with collaboration, its author, Mark Shucksmith, also highlights an important
fact – that ‘research impact cannot be achieved from the research production
side alone’.22
Mindful of this, we feel strongly that researchers must do more to acknowledge
the active agency of all those past people who played a role in the historical
development of the Highlands. They must also seek to collaborate with others
to reveal, more clearly, the ways in which people generated, catalysed, responded
to and coped with, the historical changes which have given birth to the present.
Out-migration, for example, has often been viewed as a lamentable fact of the
Highland experience, but for many of those who left, either temporarily to places
like the Caribbean or India, or permanently to places like Nova Scotia or New
South Wales, it was a proactive response to the changes taking place around
them.23 Their ability to create new communities and to (re)construct Highland,
Scottish and British identities abroad were powerful markers of the active exercise
of agency in challenging circumstances. In Nova Scotia, for example, while
many Highland Scots faced major challenges, including abject poverty, others
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History, Heritage and Sustainable Development
experienced significant economic, cultural and socio-religious success as they
established a university, enjoyed productivity as farmers and fishers and established
a musical tradition that is now world famous.24
Collaborative approaches to historical enquiry, ones that are tied more closely
to present-day needs, have the ability to breed understanding of how things came
to be as they are and to inspire and direct action for a more positive future. Arts,
humanities and social science researchers could collaborate more effectively and
fully to these ends, and should engage in more direct, substantial and longer-lived
collaborations with communities and community organisations, public sector
organisations, charities and others. In such collaboration lies the greatest potential
for delivering relevant research and for translating it – through application in
the context of local action and through education, policy development, policy
implementation and other initiatives – into real gains outside of the traditional
formal research environment.
There is tremendous value in collaboration which transcends disciplines and
sectors, because it can expand the boundaries of knowledge and understanding
for all those involved, provide genuinely new information and insight, challenge
received wisdom and traditions of thought and foster creativity. It can also create a
new space wherein researchers and others can come together to formulate deeper
and more critical perspectives on the challenges that the rural world faces and can
lead to better-informed policy and action in the world. While there is certainly
value in cultivating and maintaining particular bodies of knowledge and skill, such
expertise cannot operate in isolation if it is to help us to understand, curate, or
transform, a real world which is messy, dynamic and complex. The challenge
and the opportunity here is for all those who are involved in, or seeking to be
involved in, collaborations linking research to change in the world, to step out of
their comfort zones and to ask others for cooperation and for help in tackling the
difficult challenges that society faces.
Such collaboration has been an organising principle of the Landscapes and
Lifescapes project which, in 2015, brought together academic and community
researchers, school teachers, people from public archive organisations and
public administrators. The project uses the experience of the historic Scottish
Highlands and its links with the Caribbean to better understand the context
and consequences of change in the Highlands. Through community workshops,
a public conference, an exhibition, the development of new lesson content
for Highland schools and the production of literature in various forms, the
many and diverse collaborators in the project have sought to mobilise history
(broadly defined) to consider the impact that globalisation has had on the lives
of Highland communities, on the landscapes of the Highlands and on the lives
and landscapes of parts of the Caribbean. Importantly, efforts have been made
both to bring recent research to a wider audience and to bring community
members and school children directly into the process of thinking about the
present in ways that are historically informed. This year-long project has been
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S. Karly Kehoe and Chris Dalglish
a time- and resource-limited one, and thus modest in its ambition, but it has
helped to build foundations for future collaboration and has sown the seeds of
potential longer-term partnerships between universities, independent researchers,
local communities and public and non-governmental organisations of many kinds.
We have drawn on the disciplines of history, archaeology, geography and literature
and on the evidence found in archives, map collections and out in the landscape,
to enquire into the trajectories of past lives, the entanglement of people across
the Atlantic and the consequences of these relationships and interactions for the
development of the Highlands. The project has sought new truths about the
history of the Highlands and its relationships with the Caribbean, and has sought
to co-create new insights and knowledge both within and beyond the project
itself. Such co-creation is critical since we are dealing with a topic that is
deeply sensitive and too complex to be owned by any one discipline, person
or organisation. Interrogating this inherently complex and often painful past is
necessary if historical research (again, broadly defined) is to be able to offer greater
critical insight into the present and to contribute as fully as it might do to the
identification and pursuit of pathways to more sustainable and just development.
There is no doubt that dealing in a democratic and cooperative way with the
past is difficult, especially when past processes and actions have had profound and
harmful consequences for the present. This potential difficulty is no reason to
avoid engaging with others who may not share the same point of view. Indeed,
it is often through the coming together of different perspectives, and through
the difficult wrangles which can arise, that innovation and creativity emerge.
Agonistic struggles over the character of the past and of its impact on the present
can be productive, when handled fairly and when channelled towards a common
goal.25 Welcoming rather than eschewing the tensions and difficulties which can
arise in any collaboration between diverse people allows us to be open to the
potential inherent in such situations for social learning, where learning takes place
through interaction with others and where all involved can, in one way or another,
come to see the world in a different light. The focus here is not on reaching
consensus, but rather on profiting from dialogue. As Dalglish and Leslie argue,
the aim is to generate a democratic process which creates understanding about
the history of a place or community in terms which matter in relation to the
needs of people in the present and which helps to foster cooperation for positive
future development.26 It is important for the success of such dialogue – in terms
of its potential for driving transformative change – that researchers and others
with particular bodies of knowledge and particular skills see their roles as being
reciprocal ones. This means seeking, at one and the same time, to: a) understand,
enable and learn from others and; b) contribute actively to positive change, by
bringing their highly-developed critical skills, their subject knowledge and other
capacities to the table, challenging others to think and act differently and helping
to identify, analyse and capitalise upon the opportunities heritage presents for
sustainable development.27 Entering collaboration, with such a mind-set, opens
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History, Heritage and Sustainable Development
up opportunities to see a problem in more complex terms, and to discover more
innovative solutions.
Research with a social mission
Implied in the above is the conviction that research into the past and its presentday legacies should have a social purpose and mission, and not simply be an
intellectual exercise determined by the interests of the researcher alone. This
conviction has underpinned Landscapes and Lifescapes, which can be seen as one
manifestation of a broader shift in the way heritage is conceptualised, in terms of
its place in society today. We are sympathetic to the thinking behind the Council of
Europe Framework Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society (also known
as the Faro Convention) which recognises ‘the need to put people and human
values at the centre of an enlarged and cross-disciplinary concept of cultural
heritage’ and ‘the value and potential of cultural heritage wisely used as a resource
for sustainable development and quality of life in a constantly evolving society’.28
We also agree with the thrust of Scotland’s new Historic Environment Strategy and, in
particular, the key outcome it seeks to deliver, which is ‘to ensure that the cultural,
social, environmental and economic value of Scotland’s heritage makes a strong
contribution to the wellbeing of the nation and its people’.29 These statements are
evidence that heritage theory, policy and strategy now extend well beyond any
traditional concern for the protection, conservation and study of archaeological,
architectural, archive and other remains of the past. With these statements, the
value of heritage for society is understood to transcend such matters and to be
directly linked to the wider goal of addressing human need.
The broader value of heritage includes its economic value: in Scotland, for
instance, the historic environment is reckoned to be worth at least £2.3 billon
to the economy or roughly 2.6% of the ‘national gross value added’,30 although it
is difficult accurately to assess the monetary worth of the historical environment
and these figures might be considered underestimates. The economic value of
heritage is realised in many ways (heritage tourism being an obvious example
in the Scottish context). Historical research can support such heritage-based
economic activity, and it can also play a wider role in relation to the economy.
Reflecting upon the potential of the Highlands by looking at its pasts empowers
us to get more creative in using our research to inform approaches to its future.
This is innovation and it is something that we need much to encourage. A Scottish
Government report on the European regional development fund programme for
the Highlands and Islands echoes this point and notes that when ‘compared to
much of Europe’, ‘the absolute level of innovation in the UK and particularly in
Scotland, is relatively low [and that] the Highlands and Islands differs little from
the rest of Scotland in this regard’.31
It is insufficient, though, to restrict consideration of the value of heritage to
the matter of its economic value. As quoted above, both the Faro Convention
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and Scotland’s Historic Environment Strategy indicate clearly – and we agree – that
value here is primarily to be understood in terms of the contribution which
heritage can make to sustainable development, improved quality of life and human
wellbeing. In addition to providing opportunities for employment and resources
for economic activity, cultural heritage is now understood to be a necessary
aspect of human life in general terms and to play a key role in our cultural,
social and environmental well-being and sustainability. The organising principle of
sustainable development directs us to seek the co-development of society, culture,
economy and environment, and cultural heritage has a crucial role to play in this
process.
In order to make the link between cultural heritage and present-day human
need, and in order to mobilise heritage in addressing that need, it is important to
think of heritage in a particular way. Both the Faro Convention and the Historic
Environment Strategy for Scotland define cultural heritage as a living aspect of
culture, the character of which arises from people’s interaction with their past
and with the conditions and resources it has bequeathed the present. The Historic
Environment Strategy defines the historic environment as ‘a combination of physical
things (tangible) and those aspects we cannot see – stories, traditions and concepts
(intangible)’.32 This definition is inclusive of rural and urban landscapes as well as
many other aspects of heritage. The Faro Convention defines cultural heritage as:
. . . resources inherited from the past which people identify, independently of
ownership, as a reflection and expression of their constantly evolving values,
beliefs, knowledge and traditions. It includes all aspects of the environment
resulting from the interaction between people and places through time.33
Seeing heritage as an active part of our cultural and social lives in the present
is essential if we are to seek to overcome its negative aspects and promote the
positive benefits it can produce for society.
Connecting heritage, historical justice and sustainable development also
requires us to work in new ways. As discussed above, collaborative and cooperative
modes of enquiry, debate and action are essential in this context. It is also necessary
to create the conditions which allow for a full and meaningful engagement of
people in the identification, definition, characterisation and treatment of their
heritage. This is made clear by the Faro Convention, which is founded on the
general ideals and principles of the Council of Europe, that is respect for human
rights, democracy and the rule of law. The Convention considers that:
every person has a right to engage with the cultural heritage of their choice,
while respecting the rights and freedoms of others, as an aspect of the right
freely to participate in cultural life enshrined in the United Nations Universal
Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and guaranteed by the International
Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966).34
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The Convention also identifies ‘the need to involve everyone in society in the
ongoing process of defining and managing cultural heritage’.35
Where researchers transform their thinking and practice to align with
principles such as these, we enable ourselves to contribute much more fully to
the just and sustainable development of the society in which we live, as citizens
of that society. From this position, it is possible to become part – and a valuable
part at that – of the wider effort which is needed to enable rural communities to
address the challenges they face. With reference to Spain, Ramos and Delgado
argue that:
The rural community must assume new functions and go beyond its traditional
role as a supplier of raw materials in order to be able to meet these
new demands, which include maintaining the ecological balance, sustaining
employment and the socio-economic fabric, supplying leisure and recreations
activities, producing quality food, protecting the environment and the local
heritage, and preserving diverse cultures and traditional activities.36
We might add that rural communities should not just be seen in terms of the
functions they perform for others in society but should be understood, of course,
as communities with inherent value that should be supported in creating and
sustaining their own cultural, social and economic vitality. We would also add
that, although the above statement relates to Spain, the general points it makes
are applicable to the Scottish Highlands, where rural communities have been
constantly responding to local, national and international change over many
centuries. There is no contradiction here between the recognition of change as a
reality and the idea of valuing cultural heritage, if we understand heritage to be a
living process which comes from and draws on the past but which is nonetheless
an active and dynamic part of the present.
The Italian study quoted above is relevant here because it is an examination
of the relationship between higher education and rural development and it calls
on universities to rethink their social function because they are failing to have the
kind of influence that they should be having and need to have. Its authors wisely
call for a ‘kind of contract between the university and its surroundings’ and argue
that this kind of commitment is the best way for the former to ‘establish and carry
out [its] real social role’.37 This request is reasonable and it is a challenge that needs
to be taken up by universities everywhere, not least in Scotland. We might take a
lead, in the Scottish context, from the thinking that lies behind the University of
the Highlands and Islands (UHI).
According to a report about EU regional development funding, the Highlands
and Islands ‘significantly trails Scotland and Great Britain’ on research and
technological development because there has been a historic absence of ‘strong
research activity’ in the region.38 The establishment of UHI, which was awarded
university status in 2011 after two decades of work to develop and establish
the institution, is part of a strategy to develop research and higher education
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capacity in order to support the development of the region and its people. It is
important to the model that the university is embedded within its locale, and
UHI has many satellite campuses and local learning centres, all of which are
serviced by video-conference and other technologies, allowing the University
to reach the dispersed population of the region. This is an outstanding example
of how to reach and engage remote and rural communities on their own terms.
This is an empowering process and it helps to address the more general need, as
recognised by organisations like the Royal Society of Edinburgh, for development
and innovation to engage and involve ‘those people and communities most likely
to be affected’.39
Any renegotiation of the relationship between universities and the localities,
regions and nations in which they exist, however, requires careful thought since
there is a very real risk of getting it wrong. In the United Kingdom, for example,
the Research Excellence Framework (REF) is an important part of determining
the allocation of public funding to universities.40 This assessment of the quality of a
university’s research now includes an assessment of the ‘impact’ of that research on
the economy, society and/or culture.41 This addition to the criteria for assessing
the work of universities and for allocating public money to support that work is, in
our opinion and broadly-speaking, a good thing. It places increased emphasis on
the ‘social mission’ of research, and funding incentives have been put in place to
promote and support work which seeks to contribute directly to positive change
in the world. Yet one of the risks with REF’s impact agenda is that it is ‘a very
particular and narrow model’ which tracks the significance of one piece of work.42
We would emphasise that this does not mean that we consider that all research
must be recast as a means of delivering specific social, economic or other outcomes
which are identified in advance. There is a growing worry, among many in
academic circles, that the increased focus on ‘impact’ is a threat to ‘discovery’
or ‘fundamental’ research. Discovery research is more risky, less predictable and
likely to only produce benefits after a longer period of gestation; it may also
produce none at all. We feel that open enquiry and research which is pursued
without a tightly-specified outcome in mind has a very important role to play and
can be consistent with the broader social purpose and mission we are advocating
for research. In risking the exploration of new problems and in developing new
lines of knowledge and understanding, we give ourselves the chance to produce
unexpected results, and those are often the results with the most transformative
potential.
That said, we do believe that professional researchers (especially those who are
funded, in whole or part, from the public purse) should seek always to pursue their
work with the ultimate goal of just and sustainable development in mind. There
is still too much research around which seems, at public expense, to have been
undertaken simply for the researcher’s own interest, enjoyment and professional
and personal advancement. In addition, while the shift in research funding towards
impact has, we believe, the potential for good, it also has the potential to
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History, Heritage and Sustainable Development
create harm, where the response to this change in the funding environment is a
rush to engage with communities, public bodies and others which is primarily
motivated by the interests of researchers and research institutions. The worst
kind of engagement between professional researchers and others in society is
disingenuous, tokenistic and lacks commitment. Collaboration and cooperation
to deliver real change require relationships and trust to be built, and that process
can easily be undermined by the perception or reality of self-centredness amongst
professional researchers seeking to engage with others in society. Academics need
to ensure that they work in genuine partnership with non-academic parties, on
an ethical and responsible basis, and with the clear goal of enabling communities,
and society more generally, to address their needs.
Conclusion
We have asked what contribution historical research, broadly defined, can make
to the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in relation to
poverty, inequality and other pressing concerns. In our view, history and heritage
have a significant role to play in this context. All of the major challenges of the
present have genealogies which stretch back through time, some deeper than
others. As we stated above, the past is a part of the problem, but it is also part
of the solution. A certain kind of history is necessary to move forward into the
future on a positive footing and, above, we made this particular point in relation to
the need for historical justice, that is for developing understanding of problematic
and conflicted pasts as part of the process of overcoming their harmful legacies.
Working in certain ways to reveal and to understand has other benefits too. It is
a means of building people’s individual and institutional capacity for action, by
building confidence, knowledge, skills and relationships.
There are a number of ideas and principles which need to be put into practice
if history and heritage are to play the role they might in relation to sustainable
development. These include new conceptualisations of history (the ways we
understand the past) and heritage (our broader engagements with the legacies
of the past in the present). History and heritage are a part of life in the present,
everywhere, always and for everyone. They are living, dynamic processes. In one
way or another, the past pervades all aspects of life in the present (for good
and for ill) and heritage has broad potential value, understood in cultural, social,
economic and environmental terms. Therefore, we must extend our thinking and
our practice beyond narrow heritage concerns to work with heritage as a means
to achieve broader social and environmental goals. In order to realise this value of
heritage for society, we need to think and act in certain ways: we need to identify
the purpose and mission of historical research as a social one, linked to the pressing
needs of society and focused on enabling and empowering people to address those
needs themselves; we need to practice sustained collaboration; we need to be
willing to listen and learn, rather than simply to project outwards, while also being
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S. Karly Kehoe and Chris Dalglish
active contributors; and we need to work hard to realise a democratic approach
to heritage, which will often be tense, difficult and agonistic, but all the more
transformative because of that.
Notes
1. See https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdgs
2. United Nations Summit on Sustainable Development 2015. Informal Summary. 70th Session of
the General Assembly, United Nations Headquarters (New York, September 2015), 1.
3. For instance W. Brandt, North-South: A Programme for Survival: Report of the Independent
Commission on International Development Issues (London, 1980); International Union for the
Conservation of Nature (IUCN), World Conservation Strategy: Living Resource Conservation for
Sustainable Development (Gladn, Switzerland, 1980); United Nations, World Summit Outcome
(2005): http://www.who.int/hiv/universalaccess2010/worldsummit.pdf [Accessed 21
December 2014]; United Nations, Keeping the Promise: United to Achieve the Millennium
Development Goals (2010): http://www.un.org/en/mdg/summit2010/pdf/mdg%20
outcome%20document.pdf [Accessed 21 December 2014]; United Nations Conference
on Environment and Development, Rio Declaration on Environment and Development (1992):
http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/Agenda21.pdf [Accessed 21
December 2014].
4. The full title of the project is Landscapes and Lifescapes: Linking past rural development in the
Scottish Highlands to its global context and its present-day legacies. The project was funded by
the Royal Society of Edinburgh and ran throughout 2015.
5. James Hunter, ‘Population trends in the Highlands and Islands, 1750–2016: How the
Highland Problem originated and how it began to be solved’, commissioned paper
delivered to the House of Commons Scottish Affairs Committee, 4 July 2016.
6. Willeen Keough, ‘Creating the “Irish Loop”: Cultural Renaissance or commodification
of ethnic identity in an imagined tourist landscape’, Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, 34:2
(2012), 12–22.
7. Ray Ivany, et al., Now or Never: An urgent call to action for Nova Scotians. Report of the Nova
Scotia Commission on Building our Economy (2014), 12–15.
8. S. Karly Kehoe, ‘From the Caribbean to the Scottish Highlands: Charitable enterprise in
the Age of Improvement, c.1750–c.1850’, Rural History, 27:1 (2016), 1–23. For a perspective
on the India dimension, see Eric Grant and Alistair Mutch, ‘Indian wealth and agricultural
improvement in Northern Scotland’, Journal of Scottish Historical Studies, 35:1 (2015), 25–44.
9. Catherine Hall, Nicholas Draper, Keith McClelland, Katie Donington and Rachel
Lang, Legacies of British Slave-ownership: Colonial Slavery and the Formation of Victorian
Britain (Cambridge, 2014); Nicholas Draper, The Price of Emancipation: Slave-ownership,
Compensation and British Society at the End of Slavery (Cambridge, 2010); Hilary McD.
Beckles, Britain’s Black Debt: Reparations for Caribbean Slavery and Native Genocide (Kingston,
2013); Kehoe, ‘From the Caribbean to the Scottish Highlands’; David Alston, ‘“Very
rapid and splendid fortunes”? Highland Scots in Berbice (Guyana) in the early nineteenth
century’, Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness, 63 (2002–2004), 208–36.
10. Colin Kidd, Union and Unionism: Political Thought in Scotland, 1500–2000 (Cambridge,
2008) and Alvin Jackson, The Two Unions: Ireland, Scotland and the Survival of the United
Kingdom, 1707–2007 (Oxford, 2012).
11. Christopher Whatley, Scottish Society, 1707–1830: Beyond Jacobitism, Towards Industrialisation
(Manchester, 2000).
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History, Heritage and Sustainable Development
12. Esther Breitenbach, Empire and Scottish Society: The Impact of Foreign Missions at Home,
c.1790–c.1914 (Edinburgh, 2009); Marjory Harper, Adventurers and Exiles: The Great Scottish
Exodus (London, 2003); Marjory Harper and Stephen Constantine, Migration and Empire
(Oxford, 2010).
13. The Scottish Government, Highlands and Islands Scotland: European Regional Development
Fund 2007–2013: Structural Funds Operational Programme. Annex F: Summary of
Environmental Situation (Edinburgh, 2008) http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2008/07/
29142448/16 [Accessed 24 December 2015].
14. Allan I. Macinnes, ‘Commercial landlordism and clearance in the Scottish Highlands: The
case of Arichonan’, in J. Pan-Montojo and K. Pendersen (eds), Communities in European
History (Pisa, 2007), 47–64: Andrew Mackillop, ‘More Fruitful than the Soil’: Army, Empire
and the Scottish Highlands, 1715–1815 (East Linton, 2000).
15. James Hunter, On the Other Side of Sorrow: Nature and People in the Scottish Highlands
(Edinburgh, 1995) and James Hunter, The Making of the Crofting Community (Edinburgh,
1976).
16. See, for instance, James Hunter, From the Low Tide of the Sea to the Highest Mountain Tops:
Community Ownership of Land in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (Kershader, Isle of
Lewis, 2012).
17. Eduardo Ramos and Maria del Mar Delgado, Higher Education for Rural Development: The
Experience of the University of Cordoba (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United
Nations, Rome, 2005), 22.
18. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/
index.php?p=7 [Accessed 31 December 2016]; ‘Truth and Reconciliation Commission
of Canada: Call to Action’ (2015): http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/File/2015/
Findings/Calls_to_Action_English2.pdf [Accessed 31 December 2016].
19. Hunter, Making of the Crofting Community; Malcolm Gray, The Highland Economy,
1750–1850 (Edinburgh, 1957); T. M. Devine, Clanship to Crofter’s War: The Social
Transformation of the Scottish Highlands (Manchester, 1994).
20. The Western Isles Community Education Project is just one example. See http://icaatom.tasglann.org.uk/index.php/papers-of-western-isles-community-education-projectbernard-van-leer-foundation;isaar
21. John Prebble, The Highland Clearances (Harmondsworth, 1969).
22. Mark Shucksmith, InterAction: How can academic and the third sector work together to influence
policy and practice? (Carnegie Trust UK Report, 2016): http://www.carnegieuktrust.org.uk/
carnegieuktrust/wp-content/uploads/sites/64/2016/04/LOW-RES-2578-CarnegieInteraction.pdf
23. Harper, Adventurers and Exiles.
24. Rusty Bitterman, ‘The Hierarchy of the Soil: Land and labour in a 19th century Cape
Breton community’, Acadiensis, 18:1 (1988), 33–55; Burt Feintuch, ‘The Condition for
Cape Breton Fiddle Music: The social and economic setting of a regional soundscape’,
Ethnomusicology, 48:1 (2004), 73–104.
25. Chris Dalglish and Alan Leslie, ‘A question of what matters: landscape characterisation as
a process of situated, problem-orientated public discourse’, Landscape Research, 41:2 (2016),
212–26.
26. Dalglish and Leslie, ‘A question of what matters’.
27. Chris Dalglish, ‘Archaeologists, power and the recent past’, in C. Dalglish (ed.), Archaeology
the Public and the Recent Past (Woodbridge, 2013), 1–10; S. Jones, ‘Dialogues between past,
present and future: reflections on engaging the recent past’, in Dalglish, (ed.), Archaeology
the Public, 163–76.
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28. Council of Europe, Framework Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society (2005),
Preamble. Available at: http://www.coe.int/en/web/conventions/full-list/-/conventions/
treaty/199 [Accessed 12 January 2016].
29. The Scottish Government, Our Place in Time: The Historic Environment Strategy for Scotland
(Edinburgh, 2014), 22.
30. Ibid.
31. The Scottish Government, Highlands and Islands Scotland European Regional Development
Fund Programme 2007–13 (Edinburgh, 2008), 24
32. Ibid., 2; Our Place in Time, 22.
33. Council of Europe, Framework Convention, Article 2a.
34. Council of Europe, Framework Convention, Preamble.
35. Council of Europe, Framework Convention, Preamble.
36. Ramos and Delgado, Higher Education, 23.
37. Ramos and Delgado, Higher Education, 13–14.
38. Scottish Government, Highlands and Islands Regional Development Fund Programme, 24.
39. Royal Society of Edinburgh, Advice Paper (14–04): Rural Affairs and Environment Research
Strategy for 2016–2021: A response to the Scottish Government’s Consultation (2014).
40. See http://www.ref.ac.uk/
41. REF: Panel Criteria and Working Methods (2012), 27–34: http://www.ref.ac.uk/media/
ref/content/pub/panelcriteriaandworkingmethods/01_12.pdf
42. Shucksmith, InterAction, 11, 12, 20 and 27.
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