When British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher caused an uproar in 1987 by telling an interviewer, “There is no such thing as society,” she was referring to the big amorphous concept, not the specific word. All these years later, though, with “society” vanishing everywhere, it’s tempting to think that Maggie was just ahead of her time.
But that would be wrong. Look no further than Utah, the state founded on iconoclasm, its latter-day inhabitants still cutting against the grain. A few years ago, the Utah Division of State History decided some rebranding was in order. Focus groups were convened, state leaders consulted. Finally, in 2023, the new name was announced: the Utah Historical Society.
From Mark Lasswell, “This go-to term for teamwork is now a no-no for the snobbery police: Down with fancy “society” names!
The Washington Post, January 29, 2025.
Persons in the industry think the problem is me; I am a maverick. BUT I see every-day professionals of all kind being screwed over, not by “amorphous” semantics-reference to Institutions, but by the persons who are the decision-makers for the institutions; making decisions in large scopings of wilful ignorance.
My immediate concern is the History industry and professional historians. I was reunited with a colleague in a Coles store, after being out of touch with him for a few years. We were both once members of the Management Committee, Professional Historians Association (Queensland). At the time, although we respected each other, we would could come to loggerheads over decisions for the institution (the organisation was formerly known as the “Queensland History Institute”). My argument in the Management Commitment was that we could not afford to just rollover to government cultural policy, and we needed to resist it and create the alternative. The organisation rolled over.
Now, reunited with my colleague, a expert authority on colonialism and frontier cognition, he is technically homeless, having lived in a caravan and now boarding. Worse, and to the point, his fellow colleagues (with the exception of the dissenting-thinking historians) stated to him his homeless status was his own fault!
It is an asshole-type of thinking, but that is the condition of the history industry today; too many decision-makers obsessed for history being the comfortable thinking. All of the critical theory and social justice positions, once taught at universities, have gone out of their heads except as comforting, political, rhetoric. There is no correcting ‘substance’ (abstraction) in the thinking. So, to summaries the solutions for changing policies and being the corrected practice is as follows, as Dr Buch’s research:
- Spiral Historiography;
A.01 The Knowing Person
A.03 Horizon Worldviews (Broad Society, Hegel)
A.03 Horizon Worldviews (Evangelical aHistoricism)
A.03 Horizon Worldviews (Thesis, Qld Protestant)
A.04 Understanding the Concepts
A.05 Irrepressible Emergent Mind
A.07 Understanding Popular Culture 1945-2020
B.01 Education for Faith & Belief
B.02 Paper – Brisbane Thinkers & Local Institutions 1823-2000
B.02 The Educated Society (Philosophic Schema)
B.02 The Educated Society (Philosophic Schema). On Radical Educationalist Historiography
B.03. Mapping Local Educated Society (ANZHES)
B.04. Australian Higher Education 1989-2020
B.05 Educational Theories from USA
C.01. Queensland Character & Horizon Worldview
C.02 Qld Character (Literary & Political Setting)
C.06. Intellectual History of Queensland
D.01 On Pentecostalism in Qld
D.04. Evangelicals & Nation-Building (EHA)
D.06 Transformational Christian Thought
D.07 The Religion Category in Qld (MBH)
D.08 Religio-Cultural Belief & Imaginary from USA
D.09 Liberal Religion and Unitarian-Universals
E.01, Conflated Messages (War & Peace)
E.02 Reading Rooms (Worldviews 1880-1980)
E.03 Ethical Aims Over Time for Queensland
E.03 Righteous Mind
E.07 Secularism in Queensland
E.11 Before & After 1989 (Humanism)
E.12 American Modernism
E.13 Globalisation
E.14 Civil Society and Liberty in Queensland
F.01 Historiography and Sociology in Australia (Donald Horne Thesis)
F.01 Historiography and Sociology in Australia (Orthodoxy and Heresy)
F.01 Historiography and Sociology in Australia (Qld)
F.03 Heart Murmurs and Historical Memory
F.04 To Fight Against This Age
F.04. Humanist Historiography and History (HA)
G.02. Local Landscapes Past (MBH)
H.01 Literature & History
H.03 Teaching – Global People
H.10 Curriculum Organisation – Local Studies Public Education Program
H.11 Teaching & Curriculum. Critical Discourse
Bibliography
The bibliography is in chronological order, followed by author surname, in three section. This is to aid the understanding for the evolution of cognition in the history industry, with a few reversals. This can be mapped as the history of cognition, as per the graph:
BUCH’S KEY PUBLICATIONS
Higher Education Lesson Example (8:13:00)
2024-12-06 Further Discussions on Cognition Histories and Sociology
https://www.facebook.com/neville.buch/videos/918968329880212/?idorvanity=601373408905942
https://www.facebook.com/events/601373408905942/
No Regrets in the Evening of Life: The History of Junction Park State School (1888-2013). Boolarong Press, 2015 (pp. 459).
A Quest for a Fair Go: A History of the KSC in Queensland (with Beryl Roberts). Stafford, Qld. The Knights of the Southern Cross (Qld). 2016. (pp. 281)
No Regrets in the Evening of Life: Access, Equity and Exclusivity at Junction Park State School in the Early Twentieth Century. History of Education Review. Volume 45, No. 1, June 2016.
Small is Big: Scaling the Map for Brisbane Persons and Institutions 1825-2000. ‘The Scale of History’ AHA Conference, Australian National University, 4 July 2018
The Changing Definition of Peace, Part 1: The Status Quo of Thinking in Queensland during the Armistice. Queensland History Journal, Royal Historical Society Queensland. Volume 24, No. 1, May 2019.
The Changing Definition of Peace, Part 2: The Shifting of Thinking in Queensland during the Armistice. Queensland History Journal, Royal Historical Society Queensland. Volume 24, No. 1, May 2019.
Local History Beyond Appearance: To the hearts and minds of those who lived through World War I in the Stephens Shire, in Stephens and War: A History of Annerley and surrounding suburbs during war times, Annerley Stephens History Group Inc., 2020.
[radio interview] Kath Feeney, Afternoons, ABC Local (ABC Brisbane), 10 September 2021, 14 minutes. On myth and history of the Brisbane Southside-Northside divide, sides of the Brisbane River, suburbs, and the 11 Brisbane regions.
Finding Peace from the Culture-History War: A Historiographical Message for the Times. Academia Letters, Article 1916. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1916.
The Intellectual Ethos of Charles Strong in Queensland 1855-1917, in Marion Maddox, Charles Strong’s Australian Church: Christian Social Activism, 1885–1917, University of Melbourne Press, 2021.
Book Review of Blin, Arnaud, War and Religion: Europe and the Mediterranean from the First through the Twenty-first Centuries, University of California Press, 2019, pp. 335, ISBN 9780520961753, Journal for the Academic Study of Religion, Volume 34, No 2 (2021).
Research Note: Anglo-American Major Belief-Doubt Systems
https://www.academia.edu/104984588/Research_Note_Anglo_American_Major_Belief_Doubt_Systems , 27 July 2023.
Book Review of W. Y. Alice Chan, Teaching Religious Literacy to Combat Religious Bullying: Insights from North American Secondary Schools. Journal for the Academic Study of Religion, 36(2), 263–264. https://doi.org/10.1558/jasr.26719
A Critical Review of 2022 Theos Annual Lecture by Tom Holland, published by Humanist Australia Inc. on the Medium platform. https://medium.com/australian-humanist/a-critical-review-of-2022-theos-annual-lecture-by-tom-holland-d4268e11e7c0
Book Review of Damien B. Schlarb, Melville’s Wisdom: Religion, Skepticism, and Literature in Nineteenth-Century America, Journal for the Academic Study of Religion, 37(1), Special Issue: New Perspectives on Religions and Traditions, 135-7, ISBN 978-0-197-58556-6 (hbk).
Queensland History, Religious Education, and Belief, in Socio-Anthropological Approaches to Religion: Environmental Hope, Edited by David W. Kim and Duncan Wright, London: Lexington Books.
BUCH’S BLOG ARTICLES AND ESSAYS
122 articles and essays are listed and linked at
From The Chronicle: Vice-Chancellors are Misguided in their Decision Making, Dr Neville Buch ABN: 86703686642, October 20, 2024.
GLOBAL AND AUSTRALIAN LITERATURE
Document: GLOBAL AND AUSTRALIAN LITERATURE FOR COGNITION AND ATTITUDE IN AUSTRALIAN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY AND SOCIOLOGY, February 2025.
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Neville Buch
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