Suchergebnisse

Building upon recent work, this paper demonstrates how 21st century recordkeeping concerns are integral to societal grand challenges that have been identified by governments, think tanks, scholarly organisations and affected communities around the globe. Using the example of forced displacement and migration the paper focuses on ways in which recordkeeping is inextricably linked to both the causes and possible digital, policy and educational mechanisms for addressing certain aspects of societal grand challenges. These linkages are significantly under-explored and under-addressed in our field. The paper's principal arguments are that archives and recordkeepers have social and ethical responsibilities toward those individuals who are least empowered to engage with official records and recordkeeping practices or to maintain their own records; and that responding will require implementing archival and recordkeeping practices and policy at supra-national and meta-archival levels. The paper suggests some actions and reconceptualisations therefore, that might move us in that direction.

This essay grows out of the author's ongoing research examining issues of affect and agency as these relate to archives and recordkeeping during the post-conflict recovery and political and economic transitions occurring in countries that emerged since 1991 out of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). Specifically, since archivists in the countries play a key role in securing and providing access to records that are essential to individual, community and national recovery and transition, it contemplates possible relationships between affect and individual agency relevant to understanding their personal and professional situations. The essay also provides a synopsis of selective disciplinary literature addressing aspects of affect associated with individual experiences, memory and actions in war and post-conflict contexts. In so doing, it identifies several potentially relevant strands for further qualitative investigation of affect and its relationship to agency in the context of the individual archivist: the role of narrative, the need to integrate the social and the cultural, listening for meaningful silences, the importance of social support, the affect of place, coping mechanisms, and disenchantment with the state. The essay concludes with a brief commentary on how identifying the dimensions of affect and its relationship to agency through research such as this is an important component of understanding what professional actions, ethics and practices might be most appropriate and effective in post-conflict recovery and reconciliation, not only in these countries but also in other regions that have experienced similar extensive or recurring conflicts, especially when coupled with major political and economic transitions.

Building upon recent work, this paper demonstrates how 21st century recordkeeping concerns are integral to societal grand challenges that have been identified by governments, think tanks, scholarly organisations and affected communities around the globe. Using the example of forced displacement and migration the paper focuses on ways in which recordkeeping is inextricably linked to both the causes and possible digital, policy and educational mechanisms for addressing certain aspects of societal grand challenges. These linkages are significantly under-explored and under-addressed in our field. The paper's principal arguments are that archives and recordkeepers have social and ethical responsibilities toward those individuals who are least empowered to engage with official records and recordkeeping practices or to maintain their own records; and that responding will require implementing archival and recordkeeping practices and policy at supra-national and meta-archival levels. The paper suggests some actions and reconceptualisations therefore, that might move us in that direction.

This paper is concerned with the politics of memory and their consequences – how memory in its tangible and intangible forms is understood, performed, and acted upon in the popular imagination, and how it influences contemporary situations and inter-community relationships. Specifically, the paper is concerned with exploring the roles that the politics of memory can play not just in promoting continued community division in the aftermath of ethnic or religious conflicts in regions with complex and layered histories, but also the inverse – in promoting reconciliation. The paper takes as its primary example the multiple co-existing yet divergent accumulating narratives about the past that contributed to the eruption and later to the sustenance of The Troubles in Northern Ireland. After a brief historical review, it examines the experiences of one contemporary case that has been held up locally and internationally as exemplary in redirecting memory politics in support of reconciliation between divided communities – that of Derry~Londonderry, Northern Ireland's second city and the site of the first violent confrontations of the Troubles. Bearing in mind the concept of "archival reconciliation" proposed by Sue McKemmish et al. with regard to the construction of Australian Indigeneity, past, present and future, and Verne Harris' recent discussion of "healing" with reference to the experiences of the Nelson Mandela Foundation with human rights archives and memory work in post-apartheid South Africa, the paper concludes with some reflections on the responsibilities of memory institutions, and especially of archives, to address the politics of memory, even when those politics can traverse centuries of events; and actively contribute to reconciliation and peacebuilding in the wake of physical conflict, combatting, to use Harris' words, the weariness, stress and "stuckness" that can replace energy and hope during lengthy transition and recovery processes.

This essay grows out of the author's ongoing research examining issues of affect and agency as these relate to archives and recordkeeping during the post-conflict recovery and political and economic transitions occurring in countries that emerged since 1991 out of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). Specifically, since archivists in the countries play a key role in securing and providing access to records that are essential to individual, community and national recovery and transition, it contemplates possible relationships between affect and individual agency relevant to understanding their personal and professional situations. The essay also provides a synopsis of selective disciplinary literature addressing aspects of affect associated with individual experiences, memory and actions in war and post-conflict contexts. In so doing, it identifies several potentially relevant strands for further qualitative investigation of affect and its relationship to agency in the context of the individual archivist: the role of narrative, the need to integrate the social and the cultural, listening for meaningful silences, the importance of social support, the affect of place, coping mechanisms, and disenchantment with the state. The essay concludes with a brief commentary on how identifying the dimensions of affect and its relationship to agency through research such as this is an important component of understanding what professional actions, ethics and practices might be most appropriate and effective in post-conflict recovery and reconciliation, not only in these countries but also in other regions that have experienced similar extensive or recurring conflicts, especially when coupled with major political and economic transitions.

This paper is concerned with the politics of memory and their consequences – how memory in its tangible and intangible forms is understood, performed, and acted upon in the popular imagination, and how it influences contemporary situations and inter-community relationships. Specifically, the paper is concerned with exploring the roles that the politics of memory can play not just in promoting continued community division in the aftermath of ethnic or religious conflicts in regions with complex and layered histories, but also the inverse – in promoting reconciliation. The paper takes as its primary example the multiple co-existing yet divergent accumulating narratives about the past that contributed to the eruption and later to the sustenance of The Troubles in Northern Ireland. After a brief historical review, it examines the experiences of one contemporary case that has been held up locally and internationally as exemplary in redirecting memory politics in support of reconciliation between divided communities – that of Derry~Londonderry, Northern Ireland's second city and the site of the first violent confrontations of the Troubles. Bearing in mind the concept of "archival reconciliation" proposed by Sue McKemmish et al. with regard to the construction of Australian Indigeneity, past, present and future, and Verne Harris' recent discussion of "healing" with reference to the experiences of the Nelson Mandela Foundation with human rights archives and memory work in post-apartheid South Africa, the paper concludes with some reflections on the responsibilities of memory institutions, and especially of archives, to address the politics of memory, even when those politics can traverse centuries of events; and actively contribute to reconciliation and peacebuilding in the wake of physical conflict, combatting, to use Harris' words, the weariness, stress and "stuckness" that can replace energy and hope during lengthy transition and recovery processes.

In this essay the authors provide a summary history of archival activism, starting with the seminal 1970 speech by radical historian Howard Zinn in which he argued for archivists to rid themselves of notions of "neutrality", and actively engage in socially meaningful work. The authors identify four different forms of archival activism: community archives; socially conscious work within government-funded and other "mainstream" archives (for example, by promoting institutional transparency and accountability); research-based activism (retracing radical or suppressed histories); and socially conscious work by institutionally-independent archivists. They describe several examples of local practical applications of archival activism, such as the work of the Southern California Library in South Los Angeles; the development of the National Chavez Center Archives; independent archivists providing assistance to migrant fieldworkers in the United States in safeguarding and identifying records documenting their immigration status and employment history; and the recent rediscovery of records of the Women's Antifascist Front of Yugoslavia by independent researchers and its feminist reinterpretation.

In this essay the authors provide a summary history of archival activism, starting with the seminal 1970 speech by radical historian Howard Zinn in which he argued for archivists to rid themselves of notions of "neutrality", and actively engage in socially meaningful work. The authors identify four different forms of archival activism: community archives; socially conscious work within government-funded and other "mainstream" archives (for example, by promoting institutional transparency and accountability); research-based activism (retracing radical or suppressed histories); and socially conscious work by institutionally-independent archivists. They describe several examples of local practical applications of archival activism, such as the work of the Southern California Library in South Los Angeles; the development of the National Chavez Center Archives; independent archivists providing assistance to migrant fieldworkers in the United States in safeguarding and identifying records documenting their immigration status and employment history; and the recent rediscovery of records of the Women's Antifascist Front of Yugoslavia by independent researchers and its feminist reinterpretation.