 John
Ruskin, Our Future Voice- A Lesson in Craft and Vision
By Michael Hulme
Michael Hulme
is the Chairman of Teleconomy Group Plc. He has written
and lectured extensively on issues relating to consumer
behaviours and corporate communication, and has had
a successful commercial career in senior management
and as an entrepreneur. |
How does John Ruskin, writing some 150 years ago, bring
guidance for our future as researchers? His writings ‘The
Stones of Venice’ and ‘The Nature of Gothic’
provide commentary, criticism and research that can be seen
to be based on the fusion of social context awareness combined
with great technical skill - Ruskin’s championing of
Turner being the perfect example of this. This combination
of connectedness, broad disregard for the confines of specialisms
and an emphasis on technical excellence, or the finely honed
skills of the craftsman, I would suggest, shows research at
its best.
At one level, Ruskin represents the archetypal polymath:
the founding father of the National Trust, a contributor to
the conservation and ecology movement, social and political
commentator and influencer of the Labour Movement, artist,
art critic and supporter of both Turner and the Pre-Raphaelite
Movement, and of course natural researcher and classifier
of fossils. But at a higher level he also developed ideas
of craft and explored the relationship between the objects
created, the artist/craftsman, and society.
Ruskin ‘did not see buildings merely as works of art
created by individuals for the use of other individuals. They
were social artefacts and, as such expressed the moral condition
of the society in which and for which they were built’.
In other words, such creativity at its best is giving meaning,
making sense and becoming part of a complex and multi-level
relationship – the researcher’s ideal! But to
understand this requires an understanding of the interconnections
between method or skill, technology and the social and behavioural
contexts, whether it be a subject of research or a work of
art.
At a time of great industrial and cultural change broadly
analogous to our own, Ruskin speaks to us, as then, with a
‘refusal in an age of growing specialisation, to separate
one discipline from another or to see questions of art and
science as distinct from questions of morality’, and
thus issues challenges to many of our current research practices,
methodologies and ways of working.
As Ruskin points out, many of these challenges relate to
the nature or manner of the labour involved in the creative
processes. Is the craftsman, or the researcher, in danger
of being reduced to ‘certain fixed conventions’
whereby ‘the creative freedom of the workman is repressed
and controlled’? Or does his ‘work give freedom
to the workers’ imagination’? Importantly, Ruskin
never ceases to emphasis the role of skill or technical mastery,
but only as one element of the creative process. This commentary
can be brought up to date by considering it the context of
work by Dreyfus and his notions of hierarchy of learning and
expression, wherein the ‘expert’, artist or practitioner
transcends simple rules and guidelines (although these are
a key element of the framework for understanding) to reinterpret
a situation based on profound understanding and deep connectivity
to contextual location and use.
Today, much use is made within research of the word ‘insight’,
a word rapidly becoming debased. Insight without the combination
of technical mastery and creativity is just an empty word.
Or even worse, an example of misleading marketing. Gaining
deep understanding, or insight, involves commitment, a commitment
so profound it is akin to higher emotions such as love. Such
commitment lies in the skill of the craftsman working to draw
forth from his work deeper and more profound meanings, and
this drawing-forth is the work of the individual in direct
relation to the subject of interest. Ruskin’s concern
with the emergence of the factory and the dominance of processes
over content and craft took the form of championing the individual.
He was concerned to discover and demonstrate how craft could
flourish even against this background of factory and the onset
of mass-production, with its and alienation from context and
meaning. Such concerns are of equal relevance to us in the
research industry today.
References
John Ruskin, Unto This Last and Other Writings, Penguin 1985.
Making Social Science matter, Bent Flyvberg, Cambridge 2201.
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