Thinking forward through the past: Prospecting for urban order in (Victorian) public parks

Abstract

Supplementing familiar linear and chronological accounts of history, we delineate a novel approach that explores connections between past, present and future. Drawing on Koselleck, we outline a framework for analysing the interconnected categories of 'spaces of experience' and 'horizons of expectation' across times. We consider the visions and anxieties of futures past and futures present; how these are constituted by, and inform, experiences that have happened and are yet to come. This conceptual frame is developed through the study of the heritage and lived experiences of a specific Victorian park within an English city. We analyse the formation of urban order as a lens to interrogate both the immediate and long-term linkages between past, present and possible futures. This approach enables us to ground analysis of prospects for urban relations in historical perspective and to pose fundamental questions about the social role of urban parks. KeywordsUrban social order -Victorian parks -futures past, futures present -historical criminology Criminology has been concerned predominantly with describing the present, often with the intent of influencing the future. This 'reformist impulse' (Loader and Sparks 2011: 6), whilst an enduring strength, also evinces a preoccupation with the here-and-now. Historical research plays an indispensable role in helping to overcome this myopic fixation on the recent. In the face of this 'chronocentrism' (Rock 2005) within much criminology -variously manifested as 'presentism' (Flaatten and Ystenhede 2014: 138) or 'epochalism' (Crawford and Hutchinson 2016: 1188) -this paper explores ways in which historical insights can be 2 imaginatively harnessed to understand the present and inform visions of the future. It contributes to a wider effort to stimulate engagement between criminology and history (Dubber and Valverde 2006;Lawrence 2012). While historians are not devoid of ambitions to understand the present and shape the future, these often remain implicit -given the conventional focus on studying specific sections of the past. But claims concerning the contemporary 'relevance' of historical perspectives depend not on a deep understanding of a particular period but, as Luhmann (1976: 137) argued, on 'the capacity to mediate relations between past and future in a present'. We outline a novel approach, combining analysis of pasts and futures across times, to enrich criminological understandings of present conditions and future prospects.Besides the long-term, explanatory survey, which analyses development through time, Lawrence (2015) highlights two established modes of historical exposition within criminology, both of which juxtapose past and present, to analyse criminological problems across times. These are the 'jarring counterpoint' -in which historical research calls into question the seeming fixity of present arrangements -and the 'surprising continuity' -in which historical analysis interrogates the assumed novelty of contemporary events or processes. The first challen...

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