In fact, it’s one of my most over-used phrases. It speaks to the idea that there are underlying processes in society and just about everything else, the interrogation of which can at least give you some steer, some means of orientation, next time the world pivots on a seemingly baffling, inexplicable event.
History is not a series of random events – but it is not teleological either. There’s no design, but no pure chance. Rather, it’s a dance made by accident and subjective action set to music made by deeper, economic processes, the former in turn influencing the latter, base and structure interpenetrating.
That’s why the biggest questions of our age – Covid, the climate crisis, the ongoing impact of the 2008 financial collapse – didn’t just arise from nowhere. They were set by how we live and our systems of organising our world, of how and why we produce, how we consume.
The answers to these questions – if we find any – will be found in how we decide to organise our affairs.
On a smaller scale, but crucially important for how we go forward as a sector and a vital actor in public life, it is essential to map the terrain in which we work if we are to move through it.
In this month’s TFN magazine, we look at three new pieces of research which give us a good insight into how the sector is coping with the pandemic, and what the future may hold.
The Scottish Third Sector Tracker is a new study, featuring more than 600 organisations from across Scotland.
This is the first time a project of this scale has looked specifically at the sector in Scotland, with the findings shared with policymakers and funders in a bid to provide better support in future.
The findings highlight just how disruptive the pandemic has been for voluntary sector organisations in Scotland, and you can read about this on pages 16-17.
Similarly, new research from Acosvo (pages 20-22) examines how leaders within the sector are feeling as organisations battle back from the pandemic, and what they think will happen in the future.
Meanwhile, data from Scotland’s premiere charity recruitment site Goodmoves has revealed for the first time how the working world of Scotland’s voluntary sector has been affected (pages 18-19).
We’ve chosen to feature all of these important new studies – plus a lookback news review for further context (pages 6-14) - in this year-end edition of TFN as they provide access to the kind of astonishment-banishing foresight we’ll need for whatever is facing us in 2022.
Predictions rarely age well – I was thinking this recently when I read something by one of my favourite authors, that cheery old bird JG Ballard. Writing in the early 90s, and in keeping with the fallacious “end of history” vibe of the time, his biggest fear for the future was that it would be boring – a “vast, conforming suburb of the soul”, where nothing new or interesting ever happens again.
If only. Whatever 2022 brings, it will not be boredom. It might be terrifying, it will certainly be challenging. But let’s be ready for it.
Graham Martin is editor of TFN.
