Prospering BookV5_Layout 1 14/01/2014 21:16 Page 1 WISELY PROSPERING

How the humanities and social sciences enrich our lives

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CONTENTS

1 Introduction by Lord Stern, President of the British Academy

6 Living Better 6 What makes for ‘a good life’? 8 Evidence-based research and public reasoning 10 The challenges of inequality 11 Influencing human behaviours 13 Our culture and identity 15 ‘Knowledge is dynamic’

17 A Healthy, Open Democracy 17 What keeps it that way? 18 Academics and policy-makers 21 A contested space 22 Learning from the past

24 Fuelling Prosperity and Growth 24 Thinking beyond GDP 26 Culture and ‘soft power’ 27 Research that drives innovation 28 Dealing with the unexpected 29 Crossing continents

33 Conclusion: The Value of the Humanities and Social Sciences

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BY LORD STERN OF BRENTFORD, Our times confront us with PRESIDENT OF THE BRITISH ACADEmY tough choices, as societies, as economies, and as ‘Prosperity’. What does it mean, individuals. To understand and how can it be fostered? How challenges which include an ageing population, can people and communities have migration, sustaining the the opportunity to prosper, in the environment and managing sense expressed by Amartya Sen, climate change, we require conceptual clarity and of expanding their capabilities ‘to impartial, evidence-based lead the kind of lives they value, research and analysis, together with open- and have reason to value’? [1] mindedness and creativity in exploring new ideas. This is precisely what research and scholarship in humanities and social sciences do. The quest for a better, deeper, more valuable life has always been at their heart. They seek to illuminate the human condition and explain how economies, cultures and societies function. In addition to the intrinsic value of this quest, the insights it generates can guide – and promote – reasoned political and public discourse, by bringing Nicholas Stern fresh knowledge and ideas to the fore.

The UK’s deep reservoir of research and expertise across these disciplines – from history to psychology, economics to law, literature to philosophy and languages to archaeology – is a national asset which informs and enlarges our understanding and decision-making. It is driven by a desire to examine and explain human behaviour and aspirations: to

1. A. Sen, Development As Freedom, New York, 1999, page 18

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understand empirically how and where that we face, be it the environment, how society is functioning and to get economic growth started again, malfunctioning; to explore the ethical or how to reconstruct business in an era foundations of decision-making and its where we are past the stage of heavy underlying assumptions; to seek to learn reliance on industrial manufacture, that from history; to scrutinise how evidence does not require attention both from supports or undermines policy options; the physical sciences and from social to analyse the drivers and implications sciences and humanities.’ [2] of a changing world economy and polity, and how different societies and cultures The crucible for creating ideas and interact. It encompasses all of the understanding, and developing learning elements that make for ‘a good life’ and and expertise here in the UK is in our a healthy society. universities, hugely respected throughout the world. Humanities and Alongside the complementary and social sciences are taught by 65,000 similarly essential disciplines of science, academic staff (more than a third of the engineering and medicine, the total, and around half of all active humanities and social sciences are vital researchers). One million UK drivers of human progress. They provide undergraduates study them (46 per cent the rigorous scrutiny and insights, the of the total) together with some 60 per ideas and the long-term thinking that cent of all postgraduates; and most can and should have a profound leaders in public life – government, influence on social and cultural well- business and the voluntary sector – were being, on a modern economy driven by educated in these disciplines. They also knowledge and innovation, and, attract some 250,000 overseas students ultimately, on our place and reputation annually (nearly 60 per cent of the in the world. A society without thriving total), making vital contributions to the social sciences and humanities risks future of our international relationships achieving at best only an arid kind of and to our economy. [3] prosperity, far less rich than our creative human culture deserves – and at worst The kind of economy the UK now has, confusion, apathy, decline and conflict. and shares with more and more of the developed world, depends on the fuel of As my predecessor as British Academy creativity, knowledge and skills from President, Sir Adam Roberts, observes, ‘I social science and the humanities, just do not know of a single major problem as it needs capital resources and

2. In his interview for this booklet. Video version and longer text version available at: www.britishacademy.ac.uk/prosperingwisely/roberts 3. All figures are sourced from HESA (Higher Education Statistics Agency) published data for the academic year 2011/12 and the REF Survey of Submission Intentions, published by HEFCE, January 2013

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equipment. This ‘fuel’ helps achieve In this booklet we illustrate the growth that can renew and adapt – by humanities and social sciences at work: driving innovation, by challenging, by how academics are using their research, questioning and by offering up new insights and expertise to improve ideas. It is central to one of the fastest people’s well-being, in the UK and growing sectors, the cultural, creative internationally. We describe how their and digital industries, which work helps sustain the political and Government estimates as accounting legal frameworks that protect a healthy, for at least 8 per cent of GDP. [4] But politically engaged democracy. that is just one part of the economy Occasionally, this requires challenging where these disciplines matter. and serious questioning of existing ideas and structures, or of the powerful. And More than three-quarters of the UK we give examples of how understanding, economy is now in services, which knowledge and new ideas can inform flourish by employing people with and influence public policy and help knowledge and skills from the bring about change. humanities and social sciences – skills of critical analysis, problem solving, This document contains contributions negotiation and communication, drawn from longer interviews with some teaching and listening, and speaking of the UK’s leading academics, all other languages. And these Fellows of the British Academy (FBAs), contributions go far beyond sectors which offer illustrations of the great classified as ‘services’, into companies in potential of informed public reasoning manufacturing or natural resources. An in action. Fuller versions of these oil company, for example, needs the interviews can be found in the online skills of geologists and engineers but, version of the booklet, available through just as important to its ability to our website at www.britishacademy.ac.uk/ function successfully, it also needs prosperingwisely skilled human capital and specific sector skills in a range of other areas. These The British Academy’s Fellows embody include international relations, political and represent the very best of academic economy, law, marketing, finance, life in the humanities and social management (particularly of risk), sciences. Their work spans a rich geography and logistics, the history, diversity of fields which, together, make culture and languages of places where a huge contribution to our national life. it produces and sells, and so on. Some of this world-class research is

4. ONS recorded the size of the UK service sector as 77.8% of GDP in April 2013, http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_315661.pdf. The proportion that can accurately be allocated to the creative, cultural and digital industries is statistically elusive. The 8% government estimate is quoted by Jeremy Warner, Daily Telegraph, 3 March 2011, see: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/jeremy-warner/8358045/Intellectual-Property-reform- cannot-be-dictated-by-Google.html. DCMS figures also indicate that the sector accounts for some two million jobs and is worth over £36bn a year.

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carried out by teams of researchers, but We have, in my view, reached a position much comes from the commitment and which is potentially of great historical talent of individuals, building on a rich significance. We are witnessing a decline legacy of scholarship stretching back in confidence, and sometimes a growing through decades and often centuries. mistrust, not only in political processes and politicians, but in social institutions Academics and politicians have a shared such as the media and journalism, responsibility to use this knowledge and the police and religious organisations. understanding to help create an Inequality is rising on many crucial intellectual atmosphere in which more dimensions. We have, for many, a people, especially the young, feel moved confusion or anxiety around moral or to contribute. Their involvement social values, and community or matters, not only because of their talent, individual identity. In my own subject of energy and ideas, but also because it is economics, we have less confidence in their futures at stake. The revolution in our ability to understand processes of communications and social media has growth, employment and change. We created unprecedented opportunities for must seek growth that is sustainable in interactive public discourse. Yet the relation to our natural environment. And Hansard Society’s annual survey of voter these difficulties are not confined to our engagement in 2012 reported finding ‘a own country; they are reflected in many disgruntled, disillusioned and disengaged societies, rich and poor, around the public, turning away from politics. world. These difficulties affect us all, Across almost every area of engagement from young people looking for work, to examined by the audit trends were older people worried about the future downward, in many instances to the of their healthcare. lowest levels ever recorded.’ The 2013 report confirmed that this was not a blip: If we, as a society, cannot put this it found that just 41 per cent of the adult process into reverse, we will all be the population would be certain to vote in losers. We need a new kind of national an immediate general election and for conversation, and the voice of the 18-24 year olds that figure was just 12 humanities and social sciences must be per cent. [5] These figures reinforce the at its centre. Our researchers and impression that the public political arena scholars help delineate the choices we – the quality and quantity of questioning, confront as a society and as individuals, and the serious discussion of evidence – and how best to respond. They help is shrinking before our eyes. make the complex intelligible, and help

5. See http://www.hansardsociety.org.uk/research/public-attitudes/audit-of-political-engagement/

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us understand human values and and social sciences can help shape our possibilities. Their business is to challenge standard of living and further our quality and question, and their challenges are of life. Prosperity by itself is not enough: sometimes awkward and difficult for it must be married with wisdom. In a those in authority. They demand rigour complex modern society, we need to and honesty, they force alternative think and understand in a way that is ethical or social perspectives into the open, creative and rigorous. And we open. The British Academy has a key role must talk to each other in a reasoned, in a new national conversation that can reflective and careful way. We hope this strengthen public discussion and help us booklet helps to show how a wise understand better the meaning of understanding of prosperity can deepen prosperity, and identify pathways to and broaden well-being across our greater prosperity, in all its dimensions. society, help us think about and tackle the great challenges of our times, and We have chosen the title Prospering give us valuable insight into our lives Wisely to underline how the humanities and communities.

NOTE In this booklet we use the terms better lives; secondly, nurturing a ‘prosperity’ and ‘well-being’ in a wide healthy, open democracy; and finally, sense, embracing the range of human continuing to encourage inventiveness, and social functioning – usage that fresh thinking and the growth of derives ultimately from the ancient knowledge. In each case we illustrate Greek notion of human flourishing, or the powerful contribution made by the eudaimonia, and which has been given humanities and social sciences. The systematic development by economists, views expressed here are not a single psychologists and others. voice and not a ‘position’ of the British Academy. Some may be controversial, The three chapters that follow focus in for which no apology is needed; as turn on distinct aspects of prosperity: we argue here, lively debate and firstly, understanding the meaning of, disagreement is an indispensible part measuring and seeking to foster fuller, of a rich and healthy intellectual life.

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PROSPERING WISELY Living Better Beyond material measures of WHAT mAkES FOR individual wealth, people want to ‘A GOOD LIFE’? live in a society that invests in its Well-being is a crucial people, one that allows them to element of prosperity. Since antiquity, philosophers and prosper. But how can this be historians have reflected on achieved in a world of stark what makes for a good life, and in our own time, social inequality facing equally stark scientists have become economic and resource increasingly influential in challenges? getting governments to recognise its importance. In 2008 French President Nicolas Sarkozy asked the Nobel prizewinning economists (and British Academy Fellows) Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen to establish an international commission to explore wider ways of capturing prosperity which extended beyond Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or income per head. These would challenge the world to develop a new set of internationally approved measures that could encapsulate all of a nation’s human and physical resources – including leisure time, people’s sense of community, equality of opportunity and the quality of public services.

This ‘Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress’ (which also included leading British economists Tony Atkinson FBA and Nicholas Stern) reported the following year and its recommendations had considerable influence. It identified eight dimensions that make up overall well-

6. Sarkozy Report – source: http://www.stiglitz-sen-fitoussi.fr/en/index.htm (Quote is from Executive Summary, page 8)

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being, many of them missed by may have complicated straightforward conventional measures of prosperity: comparisons with the previous year. [9] economic well-being and work; health, education and political voice; personal The Organisation for Economic relationships, environment and security. Cooperation and Development (OECD) The Commission examined each of these is similarly placing ever-increasing concepts in detail, and explored some of emphasis on the need for prosperity to the relationships between them (‘traffic be examined and assessed across a much jams may increase GDP as a result of the wider range of measures. In its 2013 increased use of gasoline, but obviously Development Cooperation report, Ending not the quality of life’). Its report pointed Poverty, it highlights the importance of to possible ways of measuring them and the world moving beyond a focus on also highlighted the vital importance of economic growth alone. OECD gathering subjective, qualitative evidence, Secretary-General Angel Gurría says in including self-reported data on life his foreword to the report, ‘The number satisfaction. [6] and diversity of actors in development is increasing, global interdependencies are A new Commission to explore the ways in growing, and inequalities are on the rise which well-being can drive practical despite periods of economic growth. government policies at an individual, These trends call for broader measures community and regional level was that address poverty and development established in 2013 by the Legatum not only as a question of income, but Institute, chaired by former Cabinet also of inequality, sustainability, Secretary Lord O’Donnell. [7] After the inclusiveness and well-being.’ [10] This 2010 UK election, Prime Minister David growing consensus represents a call not Cameron asked the Office for National only for scholars and experts in different Statistics to start rating Britons’ overall fields to use their specialist knowledge sense of their own well-being in an and research to improve the way these annual ‘life satisfaction’ index; the first areas of life can be measured, but to findings for 2011/12, published in 2012, encourage them to go further in seeking showed an average score of 7.41 out of 10. improvements across these measures, An update for 2012/13 published in July or at least to help ameliorate the threats 2013 suggested this had risen slightly to today’s major challenges pose to them – 7.45, [8] although it has been pointed out and advise and challenge policy-makers that major national celebrations such as accordingly. the Diamond Jubilee and Olympic Games

7. Legatum Institute, see http://www.li.com/programmes/commission-on-wellbeing-policy 8. ONS report 2012 – source: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/user-guidance/well- being/index.html 9. See for example the response from the New Economics Foundation, http://www.neweconomics.org/press/entry/increases-in-uk-well-being-but-can-they-be-sustained 10. See http://www.oecd.org/dac/dcr2013.htm

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EVIDENCE-BASED RESEARCH considerably higher than his report had AND PuBLIC REASONING proposed, telling the BBC’s Today programme: ‘It is a shop with no prices This is not to deny that financial at the moment and you’ve got to be prosperity remains vital to the quality of very, very wealthy to be comfortable in a people’s lives and the opportunities they shop where there are no prices. This have. One of the most obvious should radically reduce anxiety and challenges for politicians, as for many create a world where providers and social science researchers and consumers of care can plan’. [12] The academics, is to explore specific ways to steadily ageing population is one of the improve the material circumstances of biggest societal challenges of our time particular groups within society. and has been chosen as the first topic Governments do sometimes act on the for The British Academy Debates, a series evidence brought forward on the basis of public discussions held in different UK of rigorous research. For instance, the centres, starting in February 2014. The 2012 report on fuel poverty led by Sir aim of these debates is to set out some John Hills FBA, Professor of Social Policy of the possibilities and pitfalls of public at the London School of Economics (LSE) policy-making in each area, says demonstrated the flaws in current Nicholas Stern, based on careful analysis measurement systems and proposed and discussion of the key issues, new and better ways of assessing it. In concepts and options surrounding it. response, the Department for Energy ‘We want them to help avoid ill thought- and Climate Change announced plans to out, short-term policy-making, so that find better ways of achieving ‘affordable when decisions are made, they are made warmth’ for low-income households, with more maturity than you find in the through new heating and insulation usual cut and thrust and sloganising. measures. [11] And we hope they will demonstrate the value of informed, structured public In a similar vein, the Commission on reasoning.’ Funding of Care and Support led by the economist Sir Andrew Dilnot was a key Most would recognise the vital influence on the recent government importance of both physical and mental announcement for the state to cover health to people’s well-being. Many care costs once they exceed £75,000 psychologists devote their careers to (from 2017). Dilnot welcomed this policy exploring ways to ameliorate specific change despite the figure being set mental health difficulties faced by

11. See http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20121217150421/http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/ cms/funding/fuel_poverty/hills_review/hills_review.aspx 12. Today programme, BBC Radio 4, 11 February 2013. More on the 2011 Commission on Funding of Care and Support can be found at http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20130221130239/http://www.dilnotcommission.dh.gov.uk/ our-report/

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particular groups of people – but these she emphasised hitherto neglected are not issues for psychologists alone. relationships between people’s health One notable example has been the and well-being and unresolved problems collaboration between two British in legal disputes. A highly influential Academy Fellows, David Clark, Professor study for policy-makers in the Labour of Psychology at Oxford University and Government when it appeared in 1999, it national clinical adviser at the has remained a reference point for Department of Health, and Lord Layard, successive ministers in thinking about founder of the LSE’s Centre for Economic the cost and effectiveness of legal Performance. Drawing on their respective services. She believes this was because it research expertise in psychology and shifted the focus to ‘the impact that economics, they campaigned successfully unresolved legal problems can have on for the introduction of cognitive people’s health, on social relationships, behavioural therapies that could run on family relationships; how having a alongside and sometimes replace drug legal problem you cannot solve can have treatment for people with anxiety and a cascade effect, so that everything depression. These ideas have been starts falling to pieces. heavily influential in the NHS, where the development and growth of the IAPT ‘Instead of focusing on what judges, initiative (Improving Access to lawyers and the courts were doing, Psychological Therapies) now offers Paths to Justice flipped government thousands of people more widely thinking to ask “Hang on, what is it available and more cost-effective routes that people want? What do the back to better health. [13] consumers or potential consumers of the legal system want from it?” It Similar, intensely practical concerns changed the way the government motivated Dame Hazel Genn FBA, Dean thought about things. of the Law School at University College London (UCL) and a ‘What I am interested in is how the law former lay member works’, she adds. ‘Does the law do what it of the Judicial is supposed to do? Can people use it the Appointments way we want them to be able to? How Commission. In her does the law support social order? How groundbreaking does the law support economic activity, investigation Paths economic development? Might it be that to Justice, [14] the law and the justice system are as Hazel Genn

13. See http://www.iapt.nhs.uk 14. H. Genn and S. Beinart, Paths to Justice, Oxford, 1999

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important to our nation’s health as our with whom they can readily compare hospitals?’ themselves possess. Health inequalities are a classic example. As Sir Michael The well-being of citizens has always Marmot FBA said recently, ‘I would say been dependent on the existence of to any government that cares about the sound legal structures and courts, and health of its population: look at the the legal doctrine and theory they impact of their policies on the lives depend on is under constant people are able to lead and, more interrogation and refinement by scholars. importantly, at the impact on inequality. ‘We influence the way judges think’, Health inequality, arising from social and Genn explains. In England, the common economic inequalities, is socially unjust, law is founded in the decisions of judges unnecessary and avoidable, and it in individual cases: academics then seek offends against the human right to to put it in order, framing how the law is health.’ A newly published British developing on the ground. ‘Practitioners Academy Policy Centre report also depend heavily on academic lawyers not examines these challenges, and proposes just to write heavy-duty analysis of possible approaches local authorities doctrine, but also to explain. We write might adopt to mitigate them. [16] practitioner texts and distil the essential principles they need to have at their These kinds of fingertips in order to advise clients and challenges have argue cases in court.’ [15] also been lifelong concerns of THE CHALLENGES OF INEquALITY Anthony Heath FBA, Professor at For a long time scholars have Oxford and emphasised both differential and Manchester absolute prosperity, with many arguing universities and an that the former matters most. The Anthony Heath expert on various sociologist (and former President of the kinds of inequality. British Academy) Lord Runciman argued He has worked with government in his seminal work Relative Deprivation departments in Whitehall and with the and Social Justice that relative United Nations Development deprivation arises where people believe Programme in Bosnia and Herzegovina, they have a realistic expectation of and with the OECD on ways of obtaining something that other people increasing disadvantaged minorities’

15. A video version of this interview with Hazel Genn and the longer text version published in a special edition of the British Academy Review,are available at www.britishacademy.ac.uk/prosperingwisely/genn 16. W.G. Runciman, Relative Deprivation and Social Justice, London, 1966. Michael Marmot, quoted in The Guardian, 30 October 2013: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/oct/30/britain- inequality-public-health-timebomb-marmot See also the British Academy Policy Centre report ‘If you could do one thing...’ Nine local actions to reduce Health Inequalities, 2014, available at http://www.britac.ac.uk/policy/Public_Policy.cfm

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access to labour markets, on promoting children were leaving school early, often social cohesion and on tackling racial for economic reasons. Detailed empirical discrimination in the labour market. In research can also play an important role his latest research, he has sought to in getting to the heart of an issue: shine a light on issues of ethnic defining the facts and discouraging inequality, in particular black politicians from taking potentially unemployment rates. ‘Young black men dangerous wrong turnings. British have double or treble the unemployment Academy funding contributes to these rate of their white contemporaries. I kinds of social science research; [17] and think that is a major issue of social Heath points to the example of a recent injustice – and that it threatens social study he carried out for the Department cohesion and social order,’ he says. ‘Are for Communities and Local Government. we living up to our ideals of a liberal ‘They wanted rigorous, impartial society offering equality of opportunity? evidence on whether ethnic diversity The evidence shows that these undermined cohesion or not. We had inequalities are huge and are not no idea until the results came out. The declining. So the next stage is to try to research actually showed that diversity think what could be done. What reforms had no negative effects on social would be effective? Can we investigate cohesion and that the real driver of potential levers that might go some way lack of cohesion was poverty and towards reducing the inequality? neighbourhood deprivation.’ [18]

‘The National Audit Office argued INFLuENCING HumAN in a recent report that under- BEHAVIOuRS employment of minorities costs the economy something like eight or Government’s interest in the tools which nine billion pounds a year. So there is can encourage people to change their a very powerful business case for habits or behaviours, and ‘nudge’ them tackling issues of discrimination and into behaving differently, has resulted in under-employment.’ the creation of the Behavioural Insights Team in the Cabinet Office. [19] ‘You Tangible policy outcomes often emerge can tell people that eating doughnuts is from this type of research, such as the bad for their health, or you can make it last Government’s introduction of more difficult to eat doughnuts,’ says education maintenance allowances, Nicholas Stern. ‘The first is information; based on findings that working-class the second is nudge. You are intervening

17. For an example see Dr Shawanda Stockfelt discussing how her British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship has enabled her to research educational aspirations among Black Caribbean males in the UK . Available at www.britishacademy.ac.uk/prosperingwisely/pdfs 18. A video version of this interview with Anthony Heath and the longer text version published in a special edition of the British Academy Review, are available at www.britishacademy.ac.uk/prosperingwisely/heath 19. The phrase ‘nudge’ stems from Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, New York, 2008

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in favour of the higher against the preventing disaster for future lower self, or the longer term against generations. As author of the seminal the shorter term self. Many would 2006 Stern Review on climate change, instinctively think, “Well, that is probably Nicholas Stern emphasises that this risk the right thing to do”. But social cannot be seen as minor, in terms of scientists and philosophers ask, “Is that likelihood; and that the stakes are obvious? Who are you to intervene?” In potentially immense. At base, this is a public policy decisions, you quickly run crisis about survival. into these kinds of problems, and it is our duty, from the perspective of the ‘We risk – not just a remote risk, humanities, right through the social a substantial risk – redefining the sciences, to help in structuring a relationships between human beings discussion of responses.’ and the planet. We risk hundreds of millions, possibly billions, having to Hence social scientists investigate the move and, if history tells us anything, reasons why many people apparently do that will involve severe and extended not think about the perils of sugar and conflict. The reasons for that conflict salt in the same way as they think, for cannot just be switched off; you example, about nuclear waste or cannot just make peace with the pollution. There is a growing body of environment having distorted it in important research on mistrust and the kinds of ways that are now uncertainty, how people access possible. Delay is dangerous as information, how they calibrate risk, and there is a ratchet effect, as flows the abiding force of habit. Philosophy of greenhouse gases raise and ethics are central here: to concentrations in the atmosphere examining, for instance, how we think and long-lived high carbon capital about time in the present and the future, and infrastructure are “locked-in”.’ and the interests of the very young or those yet unborn. The Stern Review has had worldwide influence. It offered an assessment of In some ways perhaps the greatest the costs and risks of inaction relative to challenge of all is responding to the the costs and risks of action. It examined impact of fossil fuels on our planet. the range of options available to Science tells us what is happening, but governments around the world, stressing we need profound behavioural change the urgent need for a global approach to to stand a chance of turning the tide and the issue and arguing that the cost of

20. N. Stern, Stern Review: The Economics of Climate Change, Cambridge, 2006. See: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http:/www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/sternreview_index.htm

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radical present-day actions to cut to recognise the old names of former emissions is small relative to the counties such as Cumberland, economic and human costs climate Huntingdonshire and Westmorland as change could impose. [20] part of the ‘tapestry of England’. ‘Our local history’, he said, ‘makes us who we Countering these risks, says Stern, are.’ [22] This view sees identity and requires the drawing together of well-being as inexorably linked, pointing economics, psychology and international to the importance relations, as well as the natural sciences of our sense of that help us understand the perils of where we belong climate change. ‘And economic history and how we relate and industrial revolutions and what to our cities and people have done to their environments countryside. This in the past. It is international politics, has been a central ethics, game theory, industrial economics theme of national – the whole gamut. You have to bring life for at least everything to bear on this subject, two centuries, because it is a subject that is all Jonathan Bate crystallised in the embracing.’ Romantic era, when William Wordsworth expressed And he adds: ‘The humanities and social passions for his native landscape which sciences are all about not being able to have coloured our shared sensibility and wave a wand. They are about how you led to widespread modern-day support deal with understanding the issues of for our National Parks and the National our time when it’s difficult. It is trying Trust. Jonathan Bate FBA, Provost of to make the difficult and the complex Worcester College, Oxford, has shown simple enough in terms of principles how these institutions owe their origin and ideas that we can find a way forward.’ in large part to Wordsworth’s influence. [21] [23]

Our culTure AND IDeNTITy Bate also points to Wordsworth’s contemporary and friend, Samuel In what the Daily Telegraph called a Taylor Coleridge, as a valuable guide to ‘symbolic gesture to celebrate St well-being. In a collection of essays he George’s Day’, the Communities edited for the Arts and Humanities Secretary Eric Pickles said he wanted Research Council, [24] he contrasts

21. A video version of this interview with Nicholas Stern and the longer text version published in a special edition of the British Academy Review, are available at www.britishacademy.ac.uk/prosperingwisely/stern 22. ‘Eric Pickles wants to reclaim historic county names’, Daily Telegraph 23 April 2013, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/10011425/Eric-Pickles-wants-England-to-reclaim-historic-county- names.html 23. See Bate’s pioneering work of literary ‘ecocriticism’, Romantic Ecology, London, 1991 24. J. Bate (ed.), The Public Value of the Humanities, London, 2011

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John Stuart Mill’s essay on the utilitarian Bate is also the biographer of John Clare, philosopher Jeremy Bentham – who the Northamptonshire poet. He argued ‘the greatest happiness of the describes him as ‘the greatest writer from greatest number is the foundation of a humble origin that England has ever morals and legislation’ – with that on seen (Scotland had Burns). He is also our Coleridge, who argued that what we greatest writer about the natural world: need to do is find the good, the true, the flowers, trees, the life of nature.’ Bate’s beautiful, the significant, and those are biography helped inspire the campaign things that cannot be quantified. Bate to preserve Clare’s cottage near adds: Peterborough, and facilitate visits there by city children in ways that promoted ‘If we simply followed Bentham it comparisons between past and present- would be football for everybody; if day cultures. One of the discoveries that you simply followed coleridge you proved most fascinating was how greatly might have a rather elitist sense that this 19th-century poet was interested ‘in the people were excluded from high environmental fragility and ecological culture. What Mill argued for was change. He witnessed great changes to some kind of balance between the the land and landscape around him and two.’ was an ecologist and conservationist before his time. The rediscovery of that That leads back to our starting point: the aspect of his work gave a very interesting desire to identify better ways of literary dimension to the questions of measuring the full mix of elements that what do we do about environmental contribute to human happiness and crisis that have now come to such public well-being. It also highlights the prominence.’ [26] importance of the emotional and spiritual dimension of culture; the arts In these ways our greatest artists and and culture, like religious faith, are a writers explore and illuminate, source of well-being to millions of sometimes in unexpected ways, timeless people. As the Archbishop of Canterbury human questions. Equally, the creative Justin Welby said recently, ‘A flourishing arts constantly influence each other and economy is necessary but not sufficient. are cross-fertilised by academic research. A healthy society flourishes and For instance, a creative collaboration distributes economic resources between Jonathan Bate and the actor effectively but also has a deep spiritual Simon Callow led to the successful base which gives it its virtue.’ [25] production Being Shakespeare (first

25. See interview with the Archbishop in the Daily Telegraph, 21 October 2013: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10392659/Economic-growth-is-not-enough-to-make- Britain-healthy-says-Archbishop-of-Canterbury.html 26. A video version of this interview with Jonathan Bate and the longer text version published in a special edition of the British Academy Review, are available at www.britishacademy.ac.uk/prosperingwisely/bate

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performed in 2011): the story of come from was a central theme of the Shakespeare’s life, dramatised through dramatic 2012 Olympics Opening extracts from his plays. Ideas may be Ceremony, with the writer, Frank Cottrell generated by a book, in turn inspired by Boyce, drawing heavily on research on new research, in turn generating new British history, culture and the work of public interest, reinforced in the media. the great documentary filmmaker The recent burst of interest in the Tudor Humphrey Jennings, who in turn drew politician/statesman Thomas Cromwell on a huge legacy of previous scholarship. was nurtured by new scholarship by Though not always immediately visible, a academic historians on early 16th- direct line runs from past scholarship to century government, building on but in present-day creation. important respects revising earlier work. This charged the imagination of Hilary ‘kNOWLEDGE IS DYNAmIC’ Mantel, whose Man Booker prizewinning novels Wolf Hall (2009) and Bring Up the In this sense Bodies (2012) have reawakened a knowledge is national interest in Cromwell, the king always active; new he served, in Henry VIII’s wives and the research keeps whole Tudor period – spurring the public shifting its to explore Hampton Court and other frontiers. ‘Our historic houses, and inspiring other culture remains in books and television programmes. dialogue with the classical world’, There is boundless evidence of this kind Mary Beard insists Mary Beard of public fascination with the past. When FBA, Professor of Richard III’s remains were discovered Classics at Cambridge University and beneath a Leicester car park, the nation popular guide to the ancient world (indeed the world) was gripped. When through her television programmes and archaeologists discovered letters home newspaper articles. ‘You couldn’t take from Roman soldiers stationed on classics out of Western culture and leave Hadrian’s Wall and the letters were anything behind but a torso. It would no translated, there was real excitement at longer make sense. being able to hear these ancient voices; with thousands of people going to the ‘you cannot just say “We do not need Roman fort at Vindolanda to see where people studying classics any more, they had come from. And where ‘we’ had because we have got everything

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translated, we have got a library; The cultural economy is a vital part of that will do”. Knowledge is dynamic our fast-expanding creative and digital and changing. you can easily see that industries, generating prosperity in a if you go back to translations of direct economic sense. Just as Greek tragedy from the early 20th important, for a great many people, is century. They are now close to the way in which cultural life and unreadable – because we are now inheritance is central to their personal engaging with Greek tragedy in a sense of well-being. Humanities research different way. Translation is always often feeds both people’s innate human about rediscovery that changes all curiosity and their need for fresh the time.’ intellectual or cultural satisfaction. As Professor Peter Hennessy FBA (whose Our research and interpretation, she books on post-war history tap into our adds, ‘are laying foundations for what is sense of ‘generational kinship’) puts it: going to happen in fifty or a hundred ‘There is a tremendous appetite for years. Judging it by what happens next history, which is very heart-warming. It year is foolish. When you say to people, meets the human desire to make sense “Do you want there to be a London and to put a bit of a pattern on your stage in which we never see Greek own experience, the times you live tragedy? Do you want there to be a through. As well as the individual world in which nobody knows who Virgil patterns there are collective patterns – was?” of course they say no.’ A vital that is the nerve we touch. And that is characteristic of knowledge is that it is a high utility, a very high utility.’ active, ‘because if we want to have these things, it is not a question of just putting a preservation order on them; it is a question of going on doing them.

‘We do not want a world without the history of western culture still present in it; we do not want to go to art galleries where nobody knows what the Renaissance painters were painting, because nobody knows what Ovid’s Metamorphoses said.’ [27]

27. A video version of this interview with Mary Beard and the longer text version published in a special edition of the British Academy Review, are available at www.britishacademy.ac.uk/prosperingwisely/beard

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PROSPERING WISELY A Healthy, Open Democracy Prosperity includes the ability WHAT kEEPS IT THAT to live in a robust and supportive WAY? environment, with a judicial and Maintaining the UK’s governmental framework that longstanding traditions as an open society and protects the rights, freedoms democracy is far from and security of individuals, automatic: it requires constant vigilance – a groups and nations, educates process heavily dependent and develops its citizens – and on insights from humanities also provides vital space for and social science disciplines. As Peter questioning and dissent. Hennessy observes, ‘If in an open society and democracy the public is denied the chance of casting an informed vote, that is an own goal of mammoth proportions. The political parties are indispensable, but they operate by mobilising prejudice more successfully than the competition. Careful use of evidence is not at the top of their hierarchy of needs, so you have to have somebody to say, “Wait a minute. It is not that simple” or “We have been here before. Just think a minute”.’ In the political arena, knowledge that is grounded in research and Peter Hennessy scholarly method will always be locked in a struggle with partisanship and supposition.

Lord Hennessy writes and broadcasts on the civil service, contemporary history and defence, on Number Ten and the office of prime minister with great authority. Now sitting as a crossbench peer, he

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provides powerful reminders to those turned out to be pivotal.’ So, as the holding power in Whitehall and in the exit polls came, commentators Cabinet that their predecessors often (including Hennessy) were able to talk confronted similar problems of security knowledgeably about precedents and public policy. He recalls a passage and protocols – to be, as he puts it, from the novelist and politician John impersonators of the British constitution, Buchan about how we situate ourselves explaining the constitutional backcloth in time and space: ‘in the cycle in which to the formation of a new government. we travel we can only see a fraction of the curve’ – and adds, ‘that matters to us ‘Politicians are exhausted. They are as human beings but certainly applies to desperate. They either want to cling those in authority.’ Ministers and on to power or want their one chance governments need and deserve expert of power and they are prone to say advice, and although they vary in their silly things about the British ability to use academic talent well, constitution (which slips through scholarship and research can often their fingers like mercury). So having contribute, vitally and immediately, to that bit of paper, which the scholars important political outcomes. had helped formulate, in the television and radio studios turned Before the last General Election, out to be absolutely critical. That’s Hennessy was one of the expert scholars an example where scholarship who studied historical precedents for rather mattered.’ [28] transitions and hung parliaments, in an attempt to specify what the ACADEmICS AND POLICY-mAkERS monarch does and does not do in the circumstances of the House of Commons ‘An academic can bring passion and having no overall majority. A small group energy,’ says the barrister, human rights of ‘five or six lawyers, historians, public expert and LSE law professor Conor policy people, with the Whitehall people, Gearty FBA, ‘but also a strong sense of the Palace and the Cabinet Office’ met to independence, of not being bought. They agree ‘what the constitution was on hung are, after all, usually funded by the parliaments, and the Queen’s prerogative taxpayer to teach and research. What an to appoint a prime minister and all that. amazing social good that is. We We agreed a draft, which then went academics can call it as we see it. That is a public to a select committee, in time for fantastic resource for policy-makers and the 2010 election, where to my surprise it politicians who are interested in reason.

28. A video version of this interview with Peter Hennessy and the longer text version published in a special edition of the British Academy Review, are available at www.britishacademy.ac.uk/prosperingwisely/hennessy

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‘The inter-relationship between the Security [29] discussed democracy, the academic who is thinking about rule of law, discrimination and secret what ought to happen, and the justice, all subjects of intense politician or policy-maker who is contemporary political and public saying “yes, you may be right, but let interest. What the social scientist can do, me tell you why that won’t work” is a he says, ‘is take a jumble of stuff that tremendously creative space, and it looks very confusing and arrange it in works to the benefit of the general a readable form. This book is short, public because they get policies because I wanted people to read, then mediated by a politician but rooted understand stuff and then, because they in independent thought.’ understand it, see that they can cope. They can cope by engagement as For Gearty, this has citizens; they can cope by knowing how never been more to contribute to a circumstance they important. ‘We want to bring about. The academic seem to be drifting renders intelligible that which is into a state of confusing, and provides an agenda for affairs where we those inclined to take action.’ [30] think we are in a democracy, we There is a long and important tradition Conor Gearty think we respect of challenge and subversiveness here; at the rule of law, we times society’s health may best be think we respect human rights, but in served by scholars from the ‘awkward fact people are getting poorer, people squad’. The 2002 Reith Lectures by are getting discriminated against more Professor Onora O’Neill FBA, which than they were, and we have secret offered a powerful critique of notions justice, and we have special courts, and of accountability throughout the public we have Guantanamo.’ sector, led to widespread acceptance that the supposedly remedial introduction Crucially, he sees the future of intellectual of transparent performance indicators work in the social sciences as a future had in fact lessened public trust. [31] centred on problem solving: ‘that is Baroness O’Neill’s subsequent work on where there is an explosion of energy the BBC after the Hutton Inquiry and from the academics, and it shows the more recently on press ethics and public that actually they can produce regulation has also been widely value.’ His recent book Liberty and influential at a time when debate over

29. C. Gearty, Liberty and Security, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2013 30. A video version of this interview with Conor Gearty and the longer text version published in a special edition of the British Academy Review, are available at www.britishacademy.ac.uk/prosperingwisely/gearty 31. Onora O’Neill’s Reith Lectures can be found at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2002/. See also her recent TED talk on the decline of Trust: http://www.ted.com/talks/onora_o_neill_what_we_don_t_ understand_about_trust.html?utm_source=email&source=email&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ios- share

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the accountability of the fourth estate interference.’ [33] He adds: ‘One of the has perhaps never been louder. [32] crucial things about social science is to get genuinely independent evidence Anthony Heath says it is the duty of which we can check against the claims scholars and researchers to remind made by political parties for their own decision-makers about unintended political advantage. It gives you an consequences or evidence they may independent basis for holding prefer not to hear – ‘telling truth to government to account.’ power’. He says: ‘I take the optimistic view that more information is going to The economist and commentator John make for better government – and that Kay FBA makes a similar point. ‘When even information that you do not like, people are rightly more and more you would still be wise to take on board sceptical about the value and the rather than suppress. I hope my research reliability of the information with which would be of interest to a government of they are presented, in the press or, any complexion.’ equally nowadays, by government, then having people out there who are just His latest project ‘was going to be a book trying to tell the truth as best they can all about the political exclusion of is terribly important’, he says. To achieve minorities and how this has all kinds of this involves education and the unfortunate consequences for lack of spreading of understanding so that political participation, apathy, alienation, citizens can be equipped to debate, and so on. In fact the evidence did not discuss and challenge. In his influential show that; the evidence is a very positive book The Long and the Short of it: Finance story that second-generation ethnic and Investment for normally intelligent minorities are politically very well- people who are not in the industry, Kay integrated. They participate at more or further extends the principle to enabling less the same rates as their white British people to challenge received wisdoms contemporaries. In fact Britain, compared and question the quality of advice they with many other countries in Europe or receive. ‘In that little book I said to the indeed America, has been rather reader that, even if at the end of this, successful at the political integration of you still do not feel confident enough to ethnic minorities... All the things that manage your financial affairs yourself, politicians have complained about you at the very least you will be able to ask actually find are getting better in the some pretty penetrating questions of second generation without any political the people you do hire.’ [34]

32. See her chapters ‘Accuracy, Independence and Trust’ in Hutton and Butler: Lifting the Lid on the of Power, British Academy/OUP, 2004; and ‘Transparency and the Ethics of Communication’ in Transparency: The Key to Better Governance, British Academy/OUP, 2006. On more recent press regulation, see for example: http://www.fljs.org/content/what-should-press-regulation-regulate, May 2012 33. A.F. Heath, S.D. Fisher, G. Rosenblatt, D. Sanders & M. Sobolewska, The Political Integration of Ethnic Minorities in Britain, Oxford, 2013 34. See J. Kay, The Long and the Short of it: A Guide to Finance and Investment for Normally Intelligent People Who Aren’t in the Industry, London, 2009

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A CONTESTED SPACE when they allow people who are not powerful to become powerful by The freedom to contest, to challenge, to bringing a more powerful person, or the critique, is a crucial hallmark of a healthy state, to account’, she says. But civic society. The right to dissent, to argue, to involvement also turns on what we hear differing points of view, to reject understand by being subjects, citizens received wisdom has long distinguished and political participants – a road that the free from the less free state. This is leads us back to antiquity. especially true, according to Conor Gearty, in moments of crisis, when ‘what The Cyrus Cylinder is widely regarded the community, what the public want is as history’s first declaration of human some guide to understanding. That is rights. Created by King Cyrus in Persia where a person who has specialised in some 2,500 years ago, it encouraged understanding behaviour, or in freedom of worship throughout the understanding culture, can become Persian Empire and allowed deported relevant; or it might be a lawyer, who people to return to their homelands. can actually understand the relationship Much admired by Thomas Jefferson, it between the law and an event. There is stimulated great interest when British this way in which an academic, Museum Director Neil MacGregor FBA independent, informed, committed to recently organised its loan to Iran and reason, with no axe to grind, can the USA. Five centuries later, an example communicate effectively at moments of dear to Mary Beard is how Cicero set the highest importance.’ down general principles of good government which were at issue in Research and scholarship can therefore Republican Rome, in some of his best- help people make informed choices and known surviving speeches. In his express themselves as citizens. This of denunciation of the Roman rebel course presupposes they live in a society Catiline, and subsequent execution of that confers such essential human rights Catiline’s associates without trial, Cicero as freedom of expression and provides raised political questions we still face. the space for contestation and challenge. These rights also assume that citizens ‘What we are seeing in 63 BC’, says have proper access to justice in order to Beard, ‘are the roots of our issues about make their formal rights effective – a homeland security, how far the state longstanding theme for Hazel Genn. should be able to suspend its normal ‘The courts are operating at their best rules of operation and citizens’ rights, in

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order to protect itself against terrorist help us understand some of the modern- threat. It has been discussed in those day tensions that arise. [35] And by terms from Ben Jonson to Ibsen, explaining how narratives of the past precisely saying “how should the state created present differences, historians respond to threats from the inside”?’ of religion and theologians can help us That’s not a plea, she adds, for every ten- celebrate diversity and not merely year-old to learn Latin, but for there to tolerate the different. be some classical scholars whose expertise can provide our culture with The historian’s vocation also involves the knowledge and understanding of questioning the record and its where it has come from. interpretation. Diarmaid MacCulloch FBA is Professor of the History of the LEARNING FROm THE PAST Church at Oxford University, well known for his classic work on the Reformation Religious belief is one of the issues and his televised Christianity: The First where a perspective from the humanities Three Thousand Years. [36] He explains: is indispensable for policy-makers since the declining numbers of British people ‘History’s main purpose is to stop us attending traditional public worship telling mistaken stories on which we regularly may lead them to underestimate then act. History is full of examples the importance of religious belief and of very bad history leading to very practice in most societies of the modern bad actions. The obvious one, which world. Far from fading away and is no less true for being obvious, is becoming a picturesque irrelevance, as the Third reich, which was built on many quite sensible and well-informed an entirely false view of history. In Western academics believed half a an evil, totalitarian dictatorship like century ago, religion is a growing force that, all history is poisoned. But the in human society, for both good and ill, same is true for any democracy. and we need to realise just what it Particularly in a democracy, telling means to live in a modern multi-cultural the story right is really very nation. Virtually all our cultures, important, because so many people particularly those most recently arrived, are involved in making decisions, live their lives amid religious rhythms, even if it is just a vote at an election.’ and shape their identities through them. Research can provide valuable insights A contemporary example MacCulloch into the complexities of meaning and cites to show the importance of

35. For an example see Dr Sadek Hamid discussing how his BA Postdoctoral Fellowship has enabled him to research the concept of jihad. See video referenced in footnote 17 36. D. MacCulloch, Reformation: Europe’s house divided, Penguin, 2003; Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, Penguin, 2011

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understanding part television series How God Made the the past in relation English (BBC 2, 2012) – and in particular to the present is the common belief that ‘Englishness is the Parliamentary tolerance’. ‘No’, MacCulloch concluded, debate on equal ‘the English have been one of the most marriage in 2012. intolerant people in history. That is a ‘One of my proudest very important lesson for us to learn. As achievements was a nation, we must not be complacent to complicate the about our past. We must see how Diarmaid MacCulloch debate in the difficult it has been to become a tolerant House of Lords’, he nation, and it’s only historians who can says. ‘That related to a lot of the work I show us that. It seems to me that it is had done on the history of the Church. actually a service to the nation to be a What I was hearing from the bit annoying, but that is what the traditionalists in the debate was that profession is about.’ [37] there was a thing called “traditional marriage” which was under threat. One of my television producers, a voting member of the Lords, used the script we had created on Christian history to show how complicated the history of marriage actually is.’

Historians, says MacCulloch, ‘are always revising the previous story. It is a very destructive profession – very often we have to dismantle cherished myths and destroy the previous stories from the previous generation. It is rather difficult because historians are paid by the government and by the public, and very often they don’t want their stories disrupted.’

Last year he tackled the confident stereotypes of Englishness in a three-

37. A video version of this interview with Diarmaid MacCulloch and the longer text version published in a special edition of the British Academy Review, are available at www.britishacademy.ac.uk/prosperingwisely/macculloch

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PROSPERING WISELY Fuelling Prosperity and Growth Ideas, innovation and knowledge This is echoed in the 2004 Kok Report: ‘The knowledge are the key drivers of modern society is a larger concept economies. Their role, says the than just an increased OECD ‘as compared with natural commitment to Research and Development (R&D). It resources, physical capital and covers every aspect of the low skill labour, has taken on contemporary economy where knowledge is at the greater importance. Although heart of value added – from the pace may differ, all OECD high-tech manufacturing economies are moving towards a and Information and Communications knowledge-based economy.’ Technologies (ICTs) through knowledge intensive services to the overtly creative industries such as media and architecture.’ The Work Foundation, reflecting this steady trend, suggests that ‘knowledge workers’ will have grown from 31 per cent of the UK workforce in 1984 to 45 per cent by 2014. Over the same period skilled and semi-skilled jobs will fall from 28 per cent to 18 per cent and unskilled from 16 per cent to 9 per cent. [38]

THINkING BEYOND GDP

Knowledge and skills are not only directly productive in making the most of both natural and (particularly) human resources, but are also the drivers of ideas that allow productivity to grow. And in thinking about the meaning of productivity it is crucial to think about much more than GDP. As a recent report

38. These quotes can all be found in the Work Foundation Report, Defining the Knowledge Economy, 2006, available at: http://www.theworkfoundation.com/assets/docs/publications/65_defining%20knowledge%20economy.pdf

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from the LSE Growth Commission who choose to study here (an enormous (drawn up by leading economists and industry of global growth).’ [39] FBAs including Nobel laureate Christopher Pissarides, Tim Besley and Many of the students who come to the Nicholas Stern) made clear, there are UK are the leaders and decision-makers serious limitations with conventional of the future. The relationships they measures of prosperity: ‘Changes in GDP make with fellow students and teachers, are an inadequate measure of human and the attachments they forge with our well-being. For example, growth could economy and culture last for the rest of be generated by damaging the their lives. They gain, and we gain; the environment with detrimental longer- world economy and society and the term consequences. More fundamentally, British economy and society are assessing developments in well-being enhanced – not just for the period they also requires looking at the distribution are with us, but far beyond. of market outcomes and improvements in public services. At present, however, In 2009, Russell Group universities alone the focus of public attention is almost accounted for an estimated economic exclusively on quarterly GDP releases as output of over £22bn per annum. [40] the barometer of economic progress.’ It may be hard to quantify precisely how the strengths of UK research and The Commission also points to the vital scholarship relate to increments in role the UK’s world-class higher output or jobs, but the evidence is all education system plays in fostering around us. Better economic and growth: ‘the benefits from maintaining organisational understanding adds to funding for research and an open the cognitive capacity of corporate environment in which universities can boards and the sustainability of their compete for the best minds as students management strategies. Engineers and faculty cannot be overestimated. collaborate with sociologists and The knowledge and understanding clinicians to improve the quality of life created in universities play a central role of older people, helping identify new in building a flexible and adaptable products that can help them and provide economy. The higher education sector new business opportunities for others. benefits the UK economy as a source of More subtly, ethical protocols drawn up skills, of innovations that raise by philosophers and theologians define productivity – and of valuable export the acceptable boundaries for earnings in the form of foreign students pioneering areas of research and medical

39. The LSE Growth Commission published its first report in September 2013. See: http://www.lse.ac.uk/researchAndExpertise/units/growthCommission/documents/pdf/LSEGC- Report.pdf 40. Russell Group, Staying on Top: The Challenge of Sustaining World-Class Higher Education in the UK, 2010

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practice. As John Kay says, ‘People who A newly published British Academy make practical decisions – which can report analysing the importance of ‘soft range from the design and technology power’ and the UK’s role in the world of an iPod to big policy decisions about concludes that ‘if we accept that soft how the financial system should be power can be defined in terms of the organised – make these decisions in a resources that are thought to generate framework of ideas that is, in the end, attraction on the part of others ... then framed by a series of academic we can focus on culture, political values disciplines.’ and foreign policy. Britain undoubtedly has a wealth of such assets’. The report CuLTuRE AND ‘SOFT POWER’ instances Britain having the world’s longest history of both parliamentary One of the clearest examples is the way democracy and industrialisation, its that the humanities nurture the UK’s intellectual heritage and legacy of flourishing arts and creative industries, renowned thinkers and scholars, and its from which the UK draws growing pioneering reputation in science and international benefits. The Culture technology from Newton to Berners-Lee Secretary, Maria Miller, talks about the which few countries can rival. [42] In a huge value of ‘soft power’. British culture world where capital and labour are and creativity, she says, ‘are now more in increasingly mobile, choice of business demand than ever before. We should be location is increasingly influenced by the increasingly proud to use the label cultural and educational appeal of a “made in Britain”.’ The UK has the largest particular country or city. Maintaining creative sector in the European Union, the UK’s rich legacy in these areas, the largest in the world in terms of GDP, fuelled by world-leading humanities and and according to UNESCO is, in absolute social science scholarship and expertise, terms, the most successful exporter of can be a major magnet for economic and cultural goods and services in the world, other activity. Similarly, a country’s strong ahead of even the US. [41] Rising reputation for tolerance and freedom can numbers for tourism, for gallery and attract those looking for somewhere to theatre admissions, for international create and build. sales of movies, television programmes and digital products, and for There is plentiful evidence of the UK’s architectural and design exports testify attractiveness as a place to visit, do to the sector’s importance at a time business in, invest in, or migrate to – and when others are flat-lining or in decline. also as a place to come to for the quality

41. Maria Miller, ‘Fighting culture’s corner in an age of austerity’, speech at the British Museum, 24 April 2013, https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/testing-times-fighting-cultures-corner-in-an-age-of- austerity Data on the creative sector taken from the British Council website: http://creativecities.britishcouncil.org/creative-industries/what_are_creative_industries_and_creative_ economy 42. More information available at: www.britishacademy.ac.uk/softpower

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of learning it affords and the opportunity ’ Progress’, she says, ‘is like moving for intellectual stimulation. Conor Gearty up a spring, so progress is onwards, recently attended a seminar in a country but sometimes one appears to go that invests heavily in education. ‘But all backwards a bit. As you round the the students want to leave, and they turn of the spring you ask questions come in particular to UK universities’, he in a different way or you are getting said. ‘The prime minister spoke directly new technology that allows you to before me, and he said: “why not come make an advance.’ and do your degrees here? We have great engineering, we have great this, we have Pioneering UK research on facial great that.” But what they do not have [in recognition has been heavily influential their country] is respect for freedom of in the way that CCTV images and expression, tolerance and diversity.’ It is memories of faces are now used in hard to overstate the immense value of criminal justice. When Bruce began her the UK’s open, intellectually rich research in this area, psychologists were environment, and vital to understand its just starting to demonstrate that people importance in fostering growth and the could remember hundreds of pictures of innovative use of knowledge. faces in laboratory experiments. ‘And at the same time ... there were lots and lots RESEARCH THAT DRIVES of cases of appalling miscarriages of INNOVATION justice where witnesses had testified that innocent people had committed Knowledge crimes. We had this extraordinary exchange and the paradox: that people were good at generation of new remembering faces and very bad at knowledge are not remembering faces.’ straight forward, automatic or even Bruce worked on how physical features linear. Often these of the human face are recognised with processes are physicists using laser scanning to build Vicki Bruce unpredictable: the 3D surface images. The research was accumulated developed on the assumption that the evidence points in one direction, but brain recognised faces in three then things turn out quite differently, dimensions, but what the evidence according to Vicki Bruce FBA, Professor proved was in fact that recognition was of Psychology at Newcastle University. actually based on much simpler 2D

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patterns of lights and darks. This Department for Business, Innovation sensitivity to image features makes it and Skills [45] created, as one possible to remember specific pictures newspaper put it, ‘a ground-breaking very well, but can confound memory in blueprint for corporate responsibility, more natural conditions. It was her investment – even the future of metaphorical spring in operation – ‘how capitalism itself’. [46] you can take these twists and turns and do research driven by one question then The experience find something different’. The work in of the financial turn spurred study of how computers crisis – foreseen might recognise faces, and was then by some, but all applied to the bases of resemblance too few, or all too between CCTV images and suspects, and little heard – should how misleading these, too, can be. [43] also remind us of the importance DEALING WITH THE uNEXPECTED John Kay of constantly questioning ideas The expertise and research of leading and asking whether we are sufficiently economists and social scientists has expert at researching the unexpected. In been particularly valuable to the reacting to the crisis, says Kay – a business and finance sectors as they founder of the Institute for Fiscal Studies strive to recover from the banking crisis (IFS), now an influential Financial Times and subsequent recession. When columnist – policy-makers focused on ‘business as usual’ failed, it was they who keeping the system afloat. played a crucial role in stimulating fresh thinking. Sir John Vickers FBA, Warden A pragmatic response to the financial of All Souls College, Oxford, chaired the crisis was reasonable but ‘quite Independent Commission on Banking, hopeless as a framework for deciding and his authoritative recommendations how in the long run you prevent that on the structure of financial institutions kind of crisis happening again.’ For and the separation of investment from that we needed fresh thought, retail banking are now working their way analysis and theoretical revision. through the system. [44] John Kay’s Now is the moment, he predicts, similarly far-reaching examination of UK when more fundamental thinking and equity markets and their capacity to ideas will start influencing policy. In invest for the long term, on behalf of the 2007, separating risky investment

43. A video version of this interview with Vicki Bruce and the longer text version published in a special edition of the British Academy Review, are available at www.britishacademy.ac.uk/prosperingwisely/bruce 44. The Independent Commission on Banking, Final Report (HM Treasury), September 2011 45. The Kay Review of UK equity markets and long-term decision making: final report (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills), July 2012 46. ‘Kay review makes mark on culture of the City’, Financial Times, 23 July 2013, page 19

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banking from the ordinary lending value of nothing. Nothing, perhaps, is so and payments systems of high street dangerous intellectually in the policy banks in the uK was impossible to sciences as an economist who knows contemplate. Now, distinguishing only economics, except, I would add, a what Kay calls the utility from the moral philosopher who knows no casino in the financial system is economics at all.’ [49] becoming public policy. CROSSING CONTINENTS In an economy addicted to what Bank of England official Andrew Haldane calls Almost three-quarters of the UK instant gratification, scholarship’s economy is now in services and in a longer-run timescales can be a vital myriad of ways these are infused (as the counterweight. Research can mitigate LSE Growth Commission emphasised) by the way capital markets focus on the the knowledge and skills that training in immediate. [47] Ideas germinate only humanities and social sciences develop in time, says Kay: ‘They influence in individuals. The ability to sell to other behaviour, but it is gradual, like dripping countries – or persuade people there to on a stone.’ Theory in one area invest here – requires knowledge and influences empirical investigation understanding of other societies, their elsewhere, finally inflecting practical pasts, their economies and their social action and policy in another place. He structures. Foreign language skills in looks back three decades to the IFS’s particular play a crucial role in opening work on fiscal neutrality – the idea that up many overseas markets – one of the the tax system was not designed to reasons why the British Academy, with secure good or penalise bad behaviour – other partners, is campaigning for as an illustration of how previous serious attention to be paid to the UK’s analysis, once considered marginal, growing language deficit. More broadly, eventually moved into the mainstream. these skills open up many other kinds of Today, public consensus that the system cross-national and cross-cultural did not penalise bad behaviour discourse, including diplomacy and sufficiently would be overwhelming. international security – a point forcibly [48] made in the Academy’s recent report Lost for Words, and echoed in the American As the economist Peter Boettke has said, Academy of Arts and Sciences’ report, ‘Critics of economics say that economists The Heart of the Matter. Quoting know the price of everything but the Senator William Fulbright, it stresses the

47. Financial Times, 30 May 2013 48. A video version of this interview with John Kay and the longer text version published in a special edition of the British Academy Review, are available at www.britishacademy.ac.uk/prosperingwisely/kay 49. P.J. Boettke in his introduction to the new edition of Ludwig von Mises’s Socialism, Laissez Faire, 2012. Available at http://lfb.org/today/the-significance-of-misess-socialism/

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vital importance of ‘intercultural We need more people who can education’ and empathy – what he called supplement their specialist knowledge ‘the ability to see the world as others do in a particular professional, scientific and allow for the possibility that others or other disciplinary area with an may see something we have failed to see, understanding of other languages, or may see it more accurately’. [50] cultures, religions or moral codes. Understanding other faiths has become As research itself becomes an ever more a growing social and political imperative. international enterprise, the importance If policy decisions are made in this of language skills, for all areas of country in relation to one of our vital research, is increasingly evident as a way trading partners across the world, or of enabling scholars to cross frontiers of if we send aid or aid-workers abroad, understanding, to mutual advantage in without understanding the religions both directions. A critical understanding which will be encountered, that vacuum of the role of translation is a vital part of of understanding is as dangerous and this. Carol Palmer, director of the British as counter-productive as not Institute at Amman, Jordan – one of the understanding the economic structures overseas institutes supported by the or the transport network. British Academy – organises workshops for teachers and researchers from across Sir Adam Roberts the Middle East and North Africa. The FBA draws on a goal, she explains, ‘is to help academics life’s work studying develop themselves and train their peace, conflict and students to be aware that translation war in different is not just a technical skill, and regions of the understand the choices that translators world. His book make, and how that influences what is Documents on the understood.’ [51] These areas are proving Adam Roberts Laws of War, first a rich and important field of study, published in 1982, ranging from exploring the complex remains hugely influential both among relationship between cultural memory academics and for practitioners in and translation, and the limits and contemporary combat zones. In foreign boundaries of language, to analyses of and security affairs, he says, scholars are the enormous range of linguistic bound to point out that the history of diversity, and its cultural strengths, relations between states demonstrates inherent in modern-day Britain. [52] fundamental differences in perspective

50. See http://www.britac.ac.uk/policy/Lost_For_Words.cfm and Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences, The Heart of the Matter, American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Cambridge (Mass.), 2013 51. Quote from Carol Palmer taken from the British Academy video www.britishacademy.ac.uk/palmer.cfm 52. British Academy Postdoctoral Fellows talk about how the scheme is enabling them to pursue research in these areas – Dr Sharon Deane-Cox studying translation and cultural memory in the context of World War Two France, and Dr Petros Karatsareas studying innovation and change in UK immigrant communities. See video referenced in footnote 17

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and values. The advice might be that inquiring into the possibilities of arms intervention is usually difficult and could control and of a reduction of tension embroil the UK for a generation. between India and Pakistan – both nuclear parties that are outside the ‘Making the policy environment nuclear non-proliferation treaty. On this more complex may save us from first mission the important thing to do serious difficulty, even tragedy. In was to listen carefully to both sides the 1990s we were guilty of thinking separately, to find out what the security that globalisation sweeps all before concerns and worries are, and what they it and we simply underestimated the thought about various possibilities for a complexity of the task of rebuilding reduction of tension between the two fractured societies, be they in states.’ All parties saw the meetings as a Afghanistan or Iraq. That was largely success, and hope to build on them. That because of a lack of interest in and offers a powerful example of the way knowledge of those societies, and that expertise gained from (in this case) their long-standing internal a lifetime’s research into peacekeeping divisions.’ successes and failures and conflict reduction in hostile zones can make an He continues: ‘We have a mania for active contribution to the search for having lots of very up-to-date improved international dialogue and information, whether it comes from understanding. [53] news agencies, television or intelligence agencies. It is a mania for up-to-date In their different ways, each of these information without a sense of where a examples warns against simplistic society is coming from and what its thinking about what knowledge means collective experience has been.’ As in a modern 21st century economy and William Dalrymple’s history of the how we can nurture, value and use it. British-Afghan conflicts of the 19th There is no longer a place for the kind of century, Return of the King, has shown, old thinking Nicholas Stern identifies as we have been here before. based on mechanical input-output models ‘where it is only if you can weigh In 2013 Roberts was part of a team from it or give a formula for it that it has the International Institute for Strategic substance’. Today’s economy, based on Studies holding the first ever talks of knowledge and ideas, is far more fluid, their kind with ‘top-level people’ in far less capable of easy definition than Islamabad and New Delhi. ‘We were any of its predecessors – but at the same

53. A video version of this interview with Adam Roberts and the longer text version published in a special edition of the British Academy Review, are available at www.britishacademy.ac.uk/prosperingwisely/roberts

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time, is in many ways more exciting and creative, provided we understand better where we are, the lessons of the past and the opportunities for the future.

A recent study of big data calculated ‘there is enough information in the world to give every person alive 320 times as much of it as historians think was stored in the Library of Alexandria’. [54] This information explosion offers extraordinary possibilities, especially in an era of fast-rising open access – but only when married with sophisticated forms of analysis, interpretation and insight. Economic growth needs the constant fuel of human inspiration. It is that which puts knowledge to use. It depends on ideas created and exchanged across disciplines, between academics and producers, entrepreneurs and scientists, disseminators and translators. It requires critical scrutiny, innovative thinking and new ideas – processes and approaches nurtured by humanities and social science training and driven forward by high-level academic research and expertise. These are seed beds for the kind of prosperous, innovation-based economy we have now become, crucial elements both for future growth and success and for richness in our individual lives.

54. Mayer-Schoenberger and Culier, Big Data, London, 2013

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PROSPERING WISELY Conclusion: The Value of the Humanities and Social Sciences

This booklet has shown It has argued that this powerful national asset humanities and social science at generates new ideas, work, describing how they can provides intellectual rigour, contribute to material progress, offers longer-term perspectives, challenges growth and innovation, cultural received wisdoms, diversity, human well-being and stimulates curiosity, and strengthens understanding understanding, and the of the multiple challenges functioning of a modern facing us as individuals and democratic state. as a society. As the humanities and social sciences take their place at the centre of a new, national conversation, we can start to understand what ‘prospering’ really means.

The theme ‘Prospering Wisely’ brings together these arguments and illustrations to emphasise the many ways in which the humanities and social sciences build up material progress, growth and innovation, while also viewing prosperity as wider than a purely economic measure. There are important ways in which scholarship can (and must) deny, disrupt and caution; that, too, is ‘functional’ in the broad sense. Democracy thrives on dissent; commercial opportunities often arise when we think most freely and creatively and leave conventional wisdoms behind.

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In a modern knowledge society, scholars don’t even know about the world. We and researchers are not confined to the need to be helping the government to universities. They are also creatively solve the challenges that we know about entangled with the worlds of business, now, but also to be thinking forward, politics and public management and about the challenges that are coming up. business. In all directions markets and If you only concentrate on what gives us civil society increasingly depend on the an immediate payoff, it is very short- knowledge and ideas they produce. ‘It is sighted. The problem with government is important to remind government, and that they are usually thinking in three- those who allocate resources, just what a to four-year terms. We are the people powerful resource we are; just how much who are going to still be there doing the our activities matter’, says Nicholas Stern. research when this particular lot of politicians have gone and somebody else The ‘mission’ of the humanities and is coming in.’ And, as John Kay social sciences is to strive to make sense emphasises, this is no less true as an of the world around us, to ‘put a bit of a indictment of many aspects of business pattern on your own experience’, as Peter and financial activity. Hennessy puts it. Quoting Einstein’s maxim ‘Never lose a holy curiosity’, he Governments, rightly, demand says ‘we exist to help take care of the accountability. But any assessment of curiosity of the species. If you have had effect or ‘impact’ has to fit the nature of the fires of curiosity lit inside your set of work that (says Jonathan Bate) often grey cells, it is a kind of sacred silken concerns the messy, debatable, duty to pass it on. That is what gets us unquantifiable but essentially human out of bed on a wet Monday in February. dimensions of life, including imagination, It is the spur and the spark.’ And he adds: faith, truth, and goodness. Nor can the ‘if you have uncurious people in terms for assessments be too narrow, authority, you are in trouble in a society.’ Kay adds. ‘It’s defining the ideas that make our society function, and that is This thirst to enquire and seek answers what people studying the humanities for stretches way beyond functional the last two thousand years have interventions and immediate impact. enabled us to do. That argument needs Hennessy puts it with typical bluntness: to be understood by people who have a ‘like all the most important things in life rather limited concept of economic value it is beyond metrics.’ And, as Hazel Genn and the ways in which value is created.’ points out, ‘there are so many things we Narrow, short-sighted accountability, as

55. O’Neill, Reith Lectures, op. cit.

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Onora O’Neill has shown, [55] can precisely X’ does not lead us away from undermine the activities under rigour or measurement; it makes us think examination and democratic processes; more deeply about the issues we examine. more thoughtful and enlightened notions of the subject, and of the meaning of By most measures, the humanities and accountability, can enhance both. social sciences in the UK (rivalled only by the USA) lead the world. Yet they are still The moral philosopher and former an underprized asset in many of the economist Professor John Broome FBA corridors of Whitehall, Westminster and stresses that constant revision and what was Fleet Street. Not all historians intellectual adaptation are central to the write best sellers and make television humanities and social sciences. Good series; not all sociologists produce reports health, in our disciplines, he says, is about that governments act on; not all ‘working up and knocking down economists regularly contribute op-ed arguments, going back to principles time pieces to the Financial Times. More of and again’. That is one of the most the enormous reservoir of expertise important ways in which they contribute which these few examples illustrate to a healthy society. It is also vital to could and should inhabit and be heard in acknowledge their normative and moral government, and be more visible to the purposes. As Diarmaid MacCulloch says, public. Humanities and social science the task of getting the story right is an scholars have to keep trying to speak ethical obligation. ‘The sciences can tell us intelligibly, to write well, to translate and wonderful things about how to heal unpack, maximising the public value of illness, how to cure particular sorts of their work by sharing their insights with malaise, but it is the humanities, it is the the widest possible audiences, using every social sciences that talk about the malaise mode of communication. in society and explain the mysterious ways in which human beings behave to John Kay, who has moved between one another. They are not susceptible to universities and business, regrets that being put into formulae or mathematical academics can still be ‘snooty about the assemblages. They are that mysterious idea of communicating or getting your thing, human nature: that’s what we deal name in the newspapers’. Mary Beard with. If you don’t have a healthy agrees. ‘There is tremendous fear that humanities and social sciences sector, somehow, if you move outside proper your country will go mad.’ The difficulty academic modes of dissemination, it is in ‘nailing something down’ as ‘meaning dumbing down. But people do not want to

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be dumbed down to, they are not stupid. I Bate, Shakespeare is both a midpoint and have been privileged, because I have a living, changing reference. He is often found a position in which I can talk, and venerated as the father figure, the place to people will take notice, whether to agree begin, although he built on Chaucer and or disagree.’ And while academics like much other earlier literature. Shakespeare herself may be the ones in the limelight, too has been constantly reinvented, revived she stresses their inter-dependency with and in turn had a shaping influence as the those tunnelling the archives, and inspiration for so much later creativity. ‘So publishing in academic journals. We must he is genuinely a figure who is constantly never forget the people ‘who sit in the changing. But he’s a figure who, in his library, year after year, and work out what work – and in the story of the reinventions Thucydides was trying to say. They of his work – enables us to connect the provide many of the most important past, the present and the future.’ discoveries.’ Apprehending the condition of people is What is encouraging are the growing one of the many things that Shakespeare signs that academics and policy-makers – both the ‘original’ and the ‘revised’ – is are strengthening their engagement with all about, says Nicholas Stern, ‘telling us one another – as, in a small way, the what people want, what they do and programme of British Academy Policy trying to understand and celebrate some Forums helps demonstrate. On a larger of the mysteries.’ He adds: ‘We have to scale, the involvement of the Economic take the concept of prosperity beyond and Social Research Council in income or consumption or material Government’s 2013 ‘What Works’ initiative wealth. Much more than that, it is how – which aims to help guide decision- we live, how we manage and live with making in tackling crime, promoting uncertainty and anxiety. We must active and independent ageing, effective recognise both that insecurity and worry early intervention, and fostering local can make us less prosperous, and that economic growth – illustrates a welcome uncertainty is a part of and sometimes recognition of the value of robust the spice of life. The humanities and research evidence in policy-making. [56] social sciences help us understand what prosperity means, and how it can be The edifice of knowledge is never fostered, individually, in a community complete. Today’s work rests on – at the and in the world. That is one of the same time as it revises – yesterday’s; that crucial reasons they matter so much, in turn is its fate tomorrow. For Jonathan and why they are so important now.’

56. See the Economic and Social Research Council’s website: http://www.esrc.ac.uk/news-and-events/ announcements/25222/esrc-particpating-in-what-works-network-for-public-sector-investments.aspx See also the newly published monograph The Impact of The Social Sciences: How Academics and Their Research Make a Difference, by LSE academics Simon Bastow, Jane Tinkler and Patrick Dunleavy, London, 2014

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February 2014

The British Academy

www.britishacademy.ac.uk