{"id":307,"date":"2010-10-01T17:09:06","date_gmt":"2010-10-01T17:09:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/humanrightsresearch.wordpress.com\/?p=307"},"modified":"2010-10-01T17:09:06","modified_gmt":"2010-10-01T17:09:06","slug":"the-activist-archivist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/humanrights\/2010\/10\/01\/the-activist-archivist\/","title":{"rendered":"The Activist Archivist"},"content":{"rendered":"

Grace Lile at WITNESS<\/a> has written a great post on their blog about Activism and Archives.\u00a0 It’s definitely worth a read.<\/a><\/p>\n

From the post:<\/p>\n

In 1970, at the annual meeting of the Society of American Archivists, gadfly historian <\/em>Howard Zinn<\/em><\/strong><\/a> gave a seminal speech<\/a>*<\/strong> in which he challenged one of the core foundational principles upon which modern archives practice was built, that of neutrality.\u00a0 The whole notion, said Zinn, was a \u201cfake,\u201d a cop-out, a dangerously passive avoidance of the inherently political nature of the archival endeavor.\u00a0 Neutrality allowed the archivist to perpetuate the status quo, to reflect and reinforce society\u2019s economic and political disparities, and to preserve the interests of the rich, powerful, literate, or otherwise privileged, at the expense of the less so.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe existence, preservation, and availability of archives, documents and records in our society are very much determined by the distribution of wealth and power.\u00a0 That is, the most powerful, the richest elements in society have the greatest capacity to find documents, preserve them, and decide what is or is not available to the public.\u00a0 This means that government, business, and the military are dominant.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Zinn challenged his audience to question their own unwitting acquiescence to entrenched power, to campaign against government secrecy, and to acknowledge and confront the societal biases that ignore the marginal, the poor, the non-literate, and even the ordinary; in essence, to embrace an activist <\/strong>rather than passive mindset.<\/em><\/p>\n

This generated a considerable amount of controversy at the time, but in the 40 years since, numerous writers and participants in archival discourse have invoked the word activist<\/strong> in calling for new approaches to a range of archival concepts and practices, including ownership, diversity, non-textual cultural heritage, information rights, community archives, the definition of the record, user participation, ethical codes, and the responsibilities of the archivist.\u00a0 Author and former SAA President Rand Jimerson wrote:<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cArchivists should use their power\u2014in determining what records will be preserved for future generations and in interpreting this documentation for researchers\u2014for the benefit of all members of society. By adopting a social conscience for the profession, they can commit themselves to active engagement in the public arena. Archivists can use the power of archives to promote accountability, open government, diversity, and social justice. In doing so, it is essential to distinguish objectivity from neutrality. Advocacy and activism can address social issues without abandoning professional standards of fairness, honesty, detachment, and transparency<\/strong>.\u201d [emphasis mine]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the rest over at the WITNESS blog:\u00a0 http:\/\/blog.witness.org\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Grace Lile at WITNESS has written a great post on their blog about Activism and Archives.\u00a0 It’s definitely worth a read. From the post: In 1970, at the annual meeting of the Society of American Archivists, gadfly historian Howard Zinn … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NL7Z-4X","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/humanrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/humanrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/humanrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/humanrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/humanrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/humanrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/humanrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/humanrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/humanrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}