Tacit knowledge, Parr points out, is recorded through the body in lived practices rather than in textual or representational forms [ 5]. Historical sources privilege certain senses, with sight traditionally being prioritized over touch and smell. This hierarchy feeds into the type of historical documents available, with academic traditions being “deeply invested in texts and in textual critique as the arbiter of research results” [ 5]. To overcome this weighting, Parr has created a website, the Megaprojects New Media series ( http://megaprojects.uwo.ca), to explore new ways of capturing “embodied histories” lost to text.

Genre and form also structure information about everyday practices, determining what data is included and omitted. Biographies, diaries, and film, for instance, exist within established traditions where literary conventions determine what information is included in each type of source, from the intimate to the heroic and fantastical. The final constraint is practical. Sifting through historical sources requires time and labor. Moreover, there is a tendency toward diminishing returns when hours are spent transcribing illegible handwriting to find only the occasional detail about a commute or a bath-time ritual. Even once this information has been retained, there continue to be challenges in extracting data in a coherent manner. The digitization of historical archives and the emergence of new research methodologies from the field of digital humanities are making these practical limitations easier to handle. Functions such as word searches, data mining, and frequency charts also provide new avenues for historians looking to locate trends and patterns in large bodies of material.

However, there is a danger that this focuses research on those sources that are available in digital form, ignoring others that might give a different perspective.

PAST FUTURES

Records of past futures also reveal avenues not taken. Multiple futures coexisted in the past. Some were borne out and others failed to materialize.

National forecasts, such as the 1952

U. S. report Resources for Freedom
(otherwise known as the Paley Report),
predicted that by 1975, U. S. aggregate
energy consumption would be roughly
Historical evidence also suggests that
the transport and energy systems
of the past could be more equitable
than some of those available today.
For instance, in the 19th century,
all but the very wealthy traveled and
heated their homes in similar ways.
Therefore, transport-related social
exclusion was less marked than it is
today, when not having a car can lead
to significant challenges. Historical
evidence suggests that people could
adapt quickly to the introduction of
technologies that reduced the energy
demands of transport and other
everyday activities. Such policies
could also help to reduce social
inequalities [ 1].

Calls for a greater connection between past, present, and future in policymaking are not new, but they do remain limited. The online platform History and Policy (www. historyandpolicy.org) has existed since 2002 and provides a vibrant forum where historians can engage with current policy issues. Other, more recent publications have also argued that historians should become more engaged with the present and future, including in the fields of transport and energy policy [ 2, 3]. However, there is little evidence in Britain that engagement by politicians and policymakers is more than superficial. This contrasts with the situation in some parts of continental Europe, where, for instance, historical researchers in the Netherlands are embedded in one of the country’s main planning structures [ 4]. One of the more common ways in which historical material has traditionally been utilized in planning and policymaking is in the forecasting of long-term economic and demographic trends to produce different future scenarios. Past time series of data may be used to extrapolate future trends while changing key parameters such as birth and death rates or economic growth to produce different scenarios. However, such techniques can provide only a macro-scale perspective and are often undermined by rapidly changing circumstances or by the unpredictable behavior of individuals and organizations.

 

RESEARCHING EVERYDAY PASTS

In spite of the dominance of this
macro perspective, historical archives
hold a wealth of information about
past everyday life, providing a micro
perspective for policymakers and
planners. Journals, oral histories,
advertisements, news media,
magazines, instruction manuals, policy
documents, film, art, and literature
are a few of the many available sources
from which details about everyday life
can be gleaned. From these sources we
can collect anecdotes about technology
use, personal habits, routines,
cultural norms, and preferences,
as well as expectations about the
future. Diaries, for example, contain
musings on mundane details, from
information about the daily commute
to reflections on the evening meal.
Oral histories capture memories of the
past, documenting personal thoughts
and anecdotal evidence of emotional
engagements with living environments.
Instruction manuals record appliances
and point toward their intended
use. Popular advertising, lifestyle
magazines, and marketing materials
reveal cultural meanings attached to
products. Cultural artifacts similarly
act as a depositary for evidence about
past models of everyday life. Novels,
biographies, and political tracts are
littered with references to everyday
practices. In addition to written
sources, visual culture is equally
revealing about the ways in which
everyday lives have been structured.
Photography, both professional and
amateur, documents the changing
space of the home, capturing
arrangements of objects and trends
of decoration. Film captures social
practices unfolding over time.

The post-war British genre of Kitchen Sink Realism, for example, tells us much about the social customs and living practices of factory workers in the 1950s.

Each of these sources has limitations, posing challenges for a historian of everyday life. Policy documents chart transformations at a governmental level, but as top-down documents they reveal little about how people experienced and lived these changes. Instruction manuals, advertisements, and industry periodicals provide information about how manufacturers intended their appliances to be used, but consumers did not always use products as intended. Furthermore, in the words of Joy Parr, it is the “embodied histories” that are excluded from the historical archive.