Hysteresis and Change
I'm coming to the end of my first year as a post graduate researcher and its been eventful to say the least. I've loved it - don't get me wrong! It hasn't been the smooth start I had hoped for. But that's OK because it's taught me a lot and my practice has changed as a result.
It's interesting this idea of change. Sometimes change can only be seen with the benefit of hindsight, after the impact is felt. Thinking back to the very beginning I look back at my initial research proposal and contrasting that with the literature review I just submitted for examination, I can see how many preconceptions I had and how biased my own thinking was.
Let's face it, the pandemic was a huge event in our lifetime that coloured all of our thinking. It made us view life through what I now call "covid tinted glasses" and in so doing, forced us to re-examine our values and priorities. But now, looking through the lens of hindsight, what do we see? What was the pandemic? And how have the changes made during the pandemic affected us in a post pandemic world?
The reality for me (and for a lot of other people) was that the pandemic was a source of trauma. So looking back on events that occurred during that period isn't easy. But it's an important process because lessons can be learned from it. But how do you learn those lessons without digging up that past trauma? Moreover, if I was to interview someone about the changes that have happened since covid, how much of the response would be given through covid tinted lenses?
These are ethical question I'm wrestling with constantly as my research progresses. Just as there is an issue of self-care to address, methodologically there is the issue of ensuring anyone who may participate in my research in future are afforded the same level of care. So I find myself wrestling with a perpetual balancing act, does the benefit of examining these events outweigh the potential drawbacks?
Equally change can be planned in advance. Such change can seem safer since there is usually some kind of roadmap or strategic plan to follow which leads to some benchmark of success. But the impact of such changes can be equally unpredictable in unexpected ways.
This is where my research started, complicated, messy and based on little more than a hunch formulated from my personal experience. It's grown since then. I've grown since then.
Change. Sociologically, to say that the pandemic experience brought about a period of change, normlessness, a period where everyone felt alienated from each other and from our usual work/life routines might be true. It certainly felt that way. So to look back on these events in more objective light as a researcher, classifying the pandemic as simply an event that generated field conditions impacting those who operate in that field (Hardy, 2014) feels quite jarring and clinical. But I'm learning that its important to think in less personal terms because the changes brought about by the pandemic were neither good nor bad. The difference lay in the perspective of the individual who were affected by the changes. What made covid changes good or bad wasn't in the creation of new rules or new working practices. What made these changes good or bad was in the ways that they impacted our practice, our routines, our preconceptions, our ways of being, or as Bourdieu terms it, our habitus.
Covid aside, how many changes have we been through in our life and professional working practice have impacted our habitus? Just as some teachers and students coped with online learning really well, in some instances preferring the flexibility offered by hybrid working, others hated it because their entire way of working and learning had to be revised. We did what we had to do to survive and some of what we went through went against every fiber of our being.
These situation where the conditions of a field are in direct conflict with the habitus of the individual is referred to by Bourdieu as hysteresis (Hardy, 2014).
Learning about hysteresis has been an interesting experience because I realised that we see it all around us on an almost daily basis. When one team or department is favoured over another we might want to say something but can't because we're worried/scared about what impact it might have on our own employment or professional reputation (whistleblowing). Or when working conditions change to such a degree that we have to adopt new practices and follow new procedures that go against our instincts, our training, our personal experience and our professional identity. Or when individuals are forced to hide their sexuality for fear of personal and professional repercussions from their family, friends, work colleagues and other communities that they're part of. Its all hysteresis, a form of conflict between the individual and the wider field of power.
But I suppose a bigger question is, what happens to the health of an individual or a community when hysteresis is sustained over long periods of time? And, if the infrastructure that links people and communities (Kanoi, 2021) generates hysteresis then there exists a responsibility on those who create such an infrastructure to examine and improve the system. Bourdieu's studies in education during the 1940s post war era highlight that the education system has always been subordinate to the field of politics and this is still true now, writing more than 70 years later. The practice of teachers working within that system are often constrained by various factors that have their roots in political machinations. That's more than 70 years of hysteresis right there, 70 years of a profession fighting against the field conditions imposed by politics.
I was speaking with a colleague just yesterday and I had a moment of clarity.
While being outside of our comfort zone is good to some extent in so far as it allows us to stretch, grow and adapt to new conditions over time, that very challenging act of adaptation creates a new normal. Simply because we demonstrate the capacity to survive under changed conditions, there comes with that an expectation that we can continue to cope under such conditions. But can we truly thrive under those conditions? While Darwin might argue that adaptation to a changing environment ensures survival of the species through evolution, teachers and their students need to do more than survive. We want to thrive and we want our students and our communities to thrive. But when all your energies are taken up dealing with conflict and survival, how can anyone thrive in those conditions.
I was inspired just a few nights ago by Cillian Murphy's portrayal of J. R. Oppenheimer in the film of the same name. I am no scientist, and I can't claim to understand the intricacies of nuclear physics. But there was a moment in the film where the main characters realised, in the event where the nucleus of the atom is split, there is the potential for an ongoing chain reaction that had the potential to ignite the atmosphere resulting in a global catastrophe. While I'm not suggesting that the education sector is on the verge of a global catastrophe, this moment in the movie did make me think about the choices we make, the changes we make and the potential to trigger chain reactions.
A central theme in this movie was that, creation of any thing should always be accompanied by the ethical consideration of impact. It's too late after the damage is done. Just because we can make changes, doesn't necessarily mean we should.
Reeder (2023) discusses how happiness can be designed into cities via infrastructure by ensuring that communities have all the resources they need with walking distance of their homes. Access to quality education is one of those resources that promote happiness. Arguably, one might contend that the progression of technology enables us to order goods and purchase services from all around the world at the click of a button. Mobile technology and artificial intelligence (AI) make it easier to access information faster than ever before (for those on the right side of the digital poverty divide). But access to information does not equate to understanding.
Society may be changing and the role of teachers may be changing as a result of that, but the need for teachers isn't gone. Part of what we do is to encourage students to critically engage with the digital world. We're evolving with the environment. As the environment around us evolves, organisations have argued the need to be agile and fluid as this the real world is dynamic, fluid and ever changing. But ongoing fluidity and dynamism doesn't leave much time for rest. Moreover, it doesn't recognise Bourdieu's observation that the habitus is inertial and resists change. Why? Because habitus, the way we do things, is based on our identity. Evolution doesn't happen overnight.
In Newtonian mechanics, there is a concept of relative velocity where the speed that one object is travelling at is measured in comparison to the speed of another object. Maybe there a concept here worth investigating: Socio-habitual relativity, the speed at which society is changing compared with that of the habitus of teachers (or other professionals)?
My foray into infrastructure so far has been quite thought provoking. If we were to take Reeder's (2023) concepts and apply them to building happier college communities, what might that look like? Do I have all the resources I need to thrive? Are those resources within easy reach? Have we taken the time to stop and consider the impact of the changes we're making? Will those changes initiate a destructive chain reaction? Or do we have the opportunity to make a change that spreads happiness through our communities? Is the education sector so systemically under resourced, that there is no room for wellbeing and happiness within the teaching profession?
As a post graduate researcher I think what I'm realising is that the practice of research and the habitus of a researcher can also result in hysteresis. In the same way that Oppenheimer found his research was subject to the wider field of politics and power, I'm realising the same thing. I'm learning that that researching infrastructure inherently means researching power structures and powerful people. But I'm also learning that as humans are inherently linked to infrastructure and linked by infrastructure (Kanoi et al., 2021), there is this ethical question again of whether the benefits of conducting research outweigh the drawbacks. Moreover, as a researcher I'm also also learning that you have to be aware of your own position in the power structure, beneath those in power while also recognising your own power to influence research participants and their power to influence your research.
Research in the field is, in itself, an exercise in hysteresis and change.
References
Hardy, C. (2014)
‘Hysteresis’ in Grenfell, C. (ed) Pierre Bourdieu: Key Concepts, Oxon,
Routledge, pp. 126 – 145.
Kanoi, L., Koh, V., Lim, A.
Yamada, S. and Dove, M. R. (2021) ‘What is infrastructure? What does it do?’:
anthropological perspectives on the workings of infrastructure(s),
Environmental Research, Infrastructure and Sustainability, Vol. 2. DOI: 10.1088/2634-4505/ac4429.
Reeder, A. (2023) 'Building Happier Cities' in Mahmoudi, H., Roe, J. and Seaman, K. (eds) Infrastructure, Wellbeing and the Measurement of Happiness, London, Routledge, pp. 9 - 39.
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