‘Teaching Austerity’ A talk by William (Bill) Taylor

The Moore Institute in association with The School of Education are pleased to host a seminar on  Teaching austerity  by Professor William M (Bill) Taylor 

Austerity is commonly associated with periods of restraint in government spending and the managed conservation of public resources during economic crises.  Government measures geared for austerity are typically contrast by policies seeking to stimulate economies, increase consumption and gross domestic product.  Such was the aim of the Australian Government’s response to the GFC and its ‘Building the Education Revolution’ (BER) program.  This was an initiative that sought to stimulate the nation’s construction industry (a key indicator of economic prosperity) by massive investment in new school infrastructure.  This was capital spending that was also promised to ‘transform’ Australia’s education sector, making it ‘better’ somehow and improve the lives (and competitiveness) of Australian pupils now and well into the future.  Cranking up the rhetoric on both sides of the austerity debate, among those both for and against government interference in the economy and in what Margaret Thatcher famously wrote off as ‘society’ is a longstanding reactionary and moralising tendency that relates restraint to simpler times, to ‘setting one’s house in order’ or to ‘living within one’s means’.  Many of us can remember hearing those lessons at home, church and school. Austerity thus raises fundamental questions about the past and historical memory.  It is about who ‘we’ are or once were as a people and society, about core beliefs and values.

As well as a brief foray into theory relating to the architecture of ‘enterprise culture’ (Mary Douglas), the seminar introduces a historical perspective, recognising that ‘building austerity’ has appeared in multiple guises. Historically, ‘austere’ practices are seen during times of conflict brought on by a range of crises, including periods of spiritual, demographic and geo-political turmoil (notably war).  This seminar outlines a parallel and at times intersecting history of practices and built environs designed for cultivating, representing and governing parsimony of various kinds. The Quaker meeting house, Ireland’s famine-era workhouses and the settings for ‘literary education’ (Ian Hunter) in Victorian era day schools are among a number of examples and opportunities to examine the architecture of public morality, pedagogy and power.

William M. Taylor is Professor of Architecture at the University of Western Australia where he teaches architectural design and history and theory of the built environment. Research interests include architecture, social and political theory. A list of his publications can be found here: http://www.web.uwa.edu.au/person/Bill.Taylor