Vidali and Philips examine “the haunted relationality of ethnographic archives and anthropology” (64). In doing so, they seek to explore the potential for multimodal installations to underline these troubled relationalities while also drawing new audiences and collaborations to anthropology. They argue that experimental ethnographic installations offer nonlinear forms of communication that can be used to illustrate the relations between fieldwork, archives, re/dislocation and aspiration. They offer two examples as evidence: Vidali’s body of materials collected in Zambia and Phillips and Vidali’s ‘radio program’ developed from these materials as a multisensorial, multimodal ethnographic exhibition in Washington DC, Paris and London. Drawing on these examples, Vidali and Philips argue that archival bodies of materials are never fixed are bounded, but rather they are continuously created and dispersed through oppositional forces of centralizing coherence and decentering diversity. They highlight ethnographic installations as enabling further potential for building and re/dislocating the archive through the engagements of installation visitors (their bodies, voices, memories, and tactile interactions).
What concepts, ideas and examples from this text contribute to the theory and practice of archive ethnography?
Vidali and Phillips offer the term multi-in-habited to highlight how archives, like anthropological projects, are inhabited by many voices—they are resonant, vibrant and often haunted.
What concepts does this text build from or advance?
The authors apply M. M. Bakhtin’s (1981) theory ofcentripetal and centrifugal forces to expose the forces that impinge the process of creating and imagining archives. Bakhtin’s concept is to them in highlightingthe centralizing and decentralizing forces and drivers (e.g. sociopolitical, economic, ideological, material, etc.) that compose the living dynamism of things.
The article builds on the work of Derrida and Foucault to argue that data curation practices in social science quantitative research data are not merely neutral techniques but are perfomative as in these practices are constitutive of the very data that is being preserved. Therefore, data curation practices are historically and culturally constitutive practices that are based on specific cultural assumptions which constructs the notion of ontological divide between data and context and the assumption that representational practices such as data curation have no effect on the contruction of the material world or the context in which it is understood. The article argues that the approach towards understanding data curation practices should move away from representational lines towards engaging with them as being constitutive of their very objects of study and the knowledge that is produced. Therefore archival practices, in particular data curation ones, produce their own reality and knowledge, as priviliged topologies and by the process of naturalizaing and erasing the fact that these are privileged topologies.
Poole reviews existing scholarship on community archives’ information work, which he approaches as “unprecedently democratic venues for information work” (657). Poole defines ‘information work’ as the infrastructure for ‘getting things done’, and ‘community archives’ as “grassroots tools of individual and collective identity, education, and empowerment” that confront discrimination, repression, marginalization and other forms of injustice produced by white supremacy, racism, neoliberalism, patriarchy, colonialism, and other violent and oppressive power structures (658).
In defining ‘community,’ Poole begins by acknowledging the imagined nature of all communities (Anderson 1991)—ultimately, any group that imagines itself a community, is a community, based on shared criteria. Unease over the definition of community is produced by application of the term to denote the ‘otherness’ of a group—whose concerns and interests can be marginalized as not being aligned with those of the societal majority—as well as scholars’ romanticized use of ‘community’ as a cure-all. For these reasons, the term ‘community archives’ remains problematic and ill-defined in some ways. Moreover, community archive stakeholders’ representations of themselves and their materials is also often internally contested. However, Poole does not build off this concept any further and moves forward acknowledging the inadequacies of the term ‘community’.
According to Poole, community archive’s information work involves challenging and transforming traditional mainstream archival principles and practices—from custody, collection development and appraisal, to processing, arrangement and description. For instance, community archivist often prefer stewardship and post-custodial practices over custody—this can entail custody practices that are more flexible or shared between community members and other institutions. Community archivists also democratize archival creation and processing.
Community archives also different from traditional principles in that they are explicitly approached as political, in that they are often created and reused in service of social justice. Community archives can act implicitly or explicitly as a form of infrapolitics (Scott, 1990), in which material and symbolic tactics as used for subterranean, political, and cultural resistance. They can serve to guide present and future action, enrich collective memory, harness affect (see quote below), and (re)claim place and space. Poole offers several examples of such applications in the work of community archivists.
Poole argues that community archives stand to benefit from collaborations or partnerships with mainstream institutions by: obtaining training and advice on different archiving practices and technologies; increasing public visibility, legitimacy and relevance; and obtaining resources (e.g. digital or physical infrastructure, secure storage, staff, space, funding) that contributes to the archive’s longevity and sustainability. Aside from mutual benefits, Poole also identifies potential hurdles between such partnerships, such as the challenge of establishing trust and balancing sustainability and autonomy. Poole identifies four key elements of sustainability: individual initiative, resources, outreach, and succession.
Poole concludes by offering potential directions for future research, such as probing how internal hierarchies affect community archives’ information work, or how community archives infrapolitical work could be applied in developing strategies for policy action.
“The affective and emotional aspects of community archives’ information work may further social justice outcomes (Caswell and Cifor, 2016; Cifor, 2016; Cifor and Gilliland, 2016; Henningham et al.,2017). According to Cvetkovich (2014), “the centrality of feeling to the relations between private and public spheres and especially ofhow the intimate life of romance, the family, and thedomestic sphere serves as the foundation for social relations ofpower” (p. 14). In other words, as Ahmed (2004) suggests, “emotions do things, and work to align individuals with collectives—or bodily space with social space—through the very intensity of their attachments” (p. 26). Emotional encounters with archives connect people to their past in ways that administrative or bureaucratic records cannot (Caswell and Mallick, 2014).” (667)
Zeitlyn identifies Derrida and Foucault as key starting points for understanding archives—as hegemonic devices that shape modes of colonization and control citizens’ ways of thinking but can also be read subversively. Power is exercised through the determination of what is included in the archival record and validation of certain representations through appraisal, selection, organization, and cataloging. However, subaltern voices can be drawn out of archives through counter-readings along and across the archival grain.
“To destroy field material is an extreme assertion of ownership. … Destruction is an extraordinary act of power (an act of hubris) and prevents colleagues from the communities studied from reconsidering our work” (473)
What is the main argument, narrative, or e/affect
The authors argue that the making of an archive is an act of power, which influences the structure and content of the archive—data—itself. According to Mauthner & Gardos (2015), “Data curation and archival practices… can be understood as historically—and culturally—specific and contingent ‘metaphysical practices that necessarily enact specific metaphysical commitments to the exclusion of others’” (p. 156). By this they mean that archives consist of both the processes of memory-making and forgetting. Citing Derrida (1995), the authors claim that aside from the positionality of the archivist, the normalized processes of data curation within a given society, “privilege” certain perspectives (concepts and categories) within an archive and naturalize the forgetting of how archives are situated according to these specific “ontological and political commitments” (p. 158). In particular, Mauthner & Gardos (2015) focus on three data curation practices 1) data cleaning 2) data anonymization 3) metadata preparation and demonstrate how these processes perpetuate subjectivities that ultimately affect and situate the archival data they create.
What is the main argument, narrative, or e/affect?
Zeitlyn (2012) reviews literature that defines the archive and examines its different roles in maintaining systems of power. The author analyzes works that view the archive as instruments of hegemonic power, as instruments of subversion, as a liminal phase between memory and forgetting, as a form of repression, and as a memory. In particular, it seems that the author critiques some of these works for using exaggerated metaphors to understand archives, and, instead, advocates for alternative considerations such as the archive as orphanages or performance records. The first view sees the archive as being without ownership or a creator; whereas, the second view sees the research process as performative and the archive as “surrogates of the events that created them” (p. 469). In the conclusion, the author suggests scholars move towards creating a “radical archive” that is “rethought and managed in ways unlike anything assumed in previous discussions concerning legal structures, privacy dates, or the models of openness” (p. 474).
Zeitlyn authored an expansive article lifting the intersection between archives and anthropology. According to Zeitlyn, an archive (or archives or Archives) as a collection of materials is put together for a specific purpose by the researcher, historian, or individual. The author discusses the views of philosophers and researchers Derrida and Foucault who propose that archives attempt to maintain control of a hegemonic narrative and through it, control of people but reading “against the grain” of archives allows for alternative narratives to rise and absent voices to be heard. Zeitlyn notes that “archive” is a term that is used often and in many different contexts (at risk of “collapsing under the weight of metaphoric overextension”) but proposes two ways of thinking about archives - “orphanages/hospices” or “performance records.” In many ways, this article builds on last week’s readings and affirms that there are many “right” ways to archive as there are projects and that the researcher has the responsibility of making an informed decision that is appropriate for the project and the human/social subjects. When making decisions about the presentation and accessibility of the archive, one must stay within the boundaries of ethical and legal parameters. Zeitlyn implores researchers to be forward-thinking in their research journey and challenges feelings of ownership over research material, and be proactive in building an (appropriately) accessible archive for future re-readings and discovery.
Together, the two reverberating reckonings (1980s reflexivity and 2020s data transparency) prompt us to think again what the quality criteria for ethnographies (as text, theory-generator, experiment, archive) could look like. The text is animated by the urgency to keep up (with technology, the "information age", new data risks) but also a generosity, knowing that ethnographers will neither arrive at shared standards (for fact checking, data sharing, etc), nor will they likely have the resources to keep up. However, the authors call for a minimum standard that links reflexivity and transparency. If reflexivity asks us to be aware of fieldwork tropes or design our ethnographies in a way that they feed back intto the practices we study, new quality criteria can be derived from asking "how we record our data, what quotations mean, whether we follow our participants online, and whether and how we anonymize" (56).
The author reevaluates the concept of “openness” and the ways scholars can arrive at different different definitions and uses of it in terms of sharing their work and the alternative means it can produce to challenge the neoliberal norms dominating universities, the publishing industry, and academia in general.
With recent advancements in technology and calls within the social sciences to make data transparent and accessible, the authors claim that ethnographers need to reconsider their data management and sharing practices. Murphy et al. argue that transparency of ethnographic data collection and sharing processes is important not for replication of the research, but for reanalysis. The authors focus on four areas of the ethnographic research process (recording and collecting data, anonymizing, data verification, and data sharing) and provide a review of how ethnographers and social science in general could benefit from making adjustments to these steps that facilitates transparency and data sharing.