Week 6: 6/26-7/2 Outreach and promotion (Domain 5) Readings in Canvas Discussion post
Week 6: Outreach & Promotion Sheila O'Hare
I took a slightly unusual approach to my answer for this week - I thought I would engage in a close textual reading of Jimerson to act as a focusing lens to think through the readings. I found the following paragraph in Jimerson’s response to Greene to be worth highlighting and further deconstructing as an approach to answering this week’s discussion question:
The problem is not politicizing archives. Rather, it is not recognizing that archives have always been politicized as centers of power within society. Through most of human history, archives have served the needs and interests of the rich and powerful. What the call of justice asks archivists to accept is a responsibility to level the playing field. The archival profession as a whole— but not necessarily each individual archivist or repository— should assume a responsibility to document and serve all groups within society. Meeting this responsibility will strengthen rather than weaken our professions ethical standing and power (Jimerson, 337).
Much of Jimerson’s response in this paragraph can certainly be read ambiguously which gives it an equivocal quality that I think justifies much of Greene’s “reading” of Jimerson’s scholarly output to be less cautious in scope than Jimerson himself is willing to grant in the majority of his response to Greene.
Let’s begin the deconstruction.
The problem is not politicizing archives. Here, Jimerson, dodges the critique that Greene proffers about the motives of many archivists animated by a Social Justice agenda. They clearly wish to transform institutions in their image which means their political agenda. In the case of Punzalan and Caswell, that is clearly motivated by a very activist implementation of a Social Justice agenda that Green clearly has in mind throughout much of his article.
Rather, it is not recognizing that archives have always been politicized as centers of power within society. Through most of human history, archives have served the needs and interests of the rich and powerful. This is a curious statement. It is true that most archives began as offshoots of records collection from formal institutions like state bureaus, churches, universities, and the like. But to say that “archives have always been politicized as centers of power within society” conflates their repository role with the executive power of the state, church, or other corporate body and treats a non-living object as if it had agency above the people who work in and for it. Perhaps, a generous reading of this sentence would be that politicized centers of power can promote both justice and injustice. But this seems unwarranted given his claim that “archives have served the needs and interests of the rich and powerful.” Apparently, providing records of land ownership, marriage records, tax payments, patent rights, and other documentary evidence that can be used in state and ecclesiastical courts really only serves the needs of the rich and powerful in controlling their social and economic inferiors. Is that really historically accurate? I find this to be a case of rhetorical overreach on the part of Jimerson.
What the call of justice asks archivists to accept is a responsibility to level the playing field. Again, this is a curious statement. What else can be meant here other than making sure the archives serves the non-rich and powerful. But doesn’t it already do that? Are land deeds and other official records regularly altered and mishandled by the archivist to the benefit of the powerful? Are archivist indeed cringing time-servers waiting patiently to do the bidding of evil capitalists and corrupt ecclesiastical persons? And aren’t the rich and powerful the ones who donate the funds for many archives to be created in the first place? Are they really so one dimensional that the only kinds of archives they create must have a class bias built into them that secretly serves their interests? And wouldn’t they choose archivists who will do their bidding?
The archival profession as a whole— but not necessarily each individual archivist or repository — should assume a responsibility to document and serve all groups within society. On the face of it, this is a rather reasonable assertion. But in the context of what’s come before, I think it worth closer scrutiny. Given that archives aren’t the personal tools of individual archivists but are indeed public/private institutions constrained by the rules and imperatives of their founders and/or chartering institutions, is this even possible? Certainly, an excellent case can be made to gather, collect, preserve, and present the records of the criminal, the marginalized, the disenfranchised, the unsavory, the renegades but that choice belongs to a wider group than just the archival professional and certainly a much broader group than social justice advocates. And while not archival institutions per se, settlement houses (think Hull House in Chicago) certainly documented the lives and stories of many of the most marginalized groups.
And this is where the confusion of neutrality and objectivity between Jimerson and Greene finds a salient real-life intersection. Should archivist do the documentary work for groups who don’t or can’t document their culture? Or should that be the job of ethnographers, social workers, census takers, activists, and researchers? Should archivist provide outreach and training for underserved communities to learn how to document their culture? Or should they look for new types of records that record authenticate “speech” and praxis of these groups? I think Greene in this case is arguing for a neutrality to archives that is similar to the neutrality that is part of the ethical code of the ethnography profession. To observe, record, preserve but not unduly influence the group under study. And where both writers differ in their usage of objective and objectivity, I think again the professional practice of ethnographers can clear up some of the confusion. Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, (1986) edited by James Clifford and George Marcus, offers “a focal point for looking at how ethnographers could describe different cultures and societies without denying the subjectivity of those individuals and groups being studied while simultaneously doing so without laying claim to absolute knowledge and objective authority” (Wikipedia, 2017). This is more in keeping with Jimerson’s claim for an objectivity of practice rather than an epistemological claim for objectivity that Greene argues is impossible.
Meeting this responsibility will strengthen rather than weaken our profession's ethical standing and power. And Jimerson doesn’t disappoint in his final sentence – archivists can enhance their ethical standing and power by adopting a social justice agenda. Clearly, his conception of what that agenda is – is significantly constrained when compared to the social engineering that Punzalan and Caswell seem to advocate but I think Greene is right to provide the cautionary prohibition against aligning the profession with an ideology that is clearly politically grounded. As a person, I want more voices and more sources to be documented in the historical records. I want a fuller picture of history. I want to hear the accounts of more than just the literate and the leisured. I want more than just second-hand descriptions of other communities. I want to hear the unmediated voice of another person – alien, unintelligible, weird, revolting, superior, mirroring – in a word, human. When aligned with the value of diversity, inclusion, and comprehensiveness, I’m for archival collections expanding where appropriate. But when a utopian political agenda is part of the deal, include me out!
Ethnography. (n.d.). Retrieved July 1, 2017 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnography#Challenges_of_ethnography (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
Greene, M.A. (2013). A critique of social justice as an archival imperative: What is it we’re doing that’s all that important? The American Archivist 76(2), 302-334
Jimerson, R.C. (2013). Archivists and social responsibility: A response to Mark Greene. The American Archivist, 76(2), 335-345.