1st Edition

Archives, Recordkeeping and Social Justice

    282 Pages 1 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    282 Pages 1 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    Archives, Recordkeeping, and Social Justice expands the burgeoning literature on archival social justice and impact. Illuminating how diverse factors shape the relationship between archives, recordkeeping systems, and recordkeepers, this book depicts struggles for different social justice objectives.

    Discussions and debates about social justice are playing out across many disciplines, fields of practice, societal sectors, and governments, and yet one dimension cross-cutting these actors and engagement spaces has remained unexplored: the role of recordkeeping and archiving. To clarify and elaborate this connection, this volume provides a rigorous account of the engagement of archives and records—and their keepers—in struggles for social justice. Drawing upon multidisciplinary praxis and scholarship, contributors to the volume examine social justice from historical and contemporary perspectives and promote impact methodologies that align with culturally responsive, democratic, Indigenous, and transformative assessment. Underscoring the multiplicity of transformative social justice impacts influenced by recordmaking, recordkeeping, and archiving, the book presents nine case studies from around the world that link the past to the present and offer pathways towards a more just future.

    Archives, Recordkeeping, and Social Justice will be an essential reading for researchers and students engaged in the study of archives, truth and reconciliation processes, social justice, and human rights. It should also be of great interest to archivists, records managers, and information professionals.

     

    Section 1

    Chapter 1: Introduction to Archives, Recordkeeping and Social Justice

    Renée Saucier and David A. Wallace

    Chapter 2: Defining the Relationship between Archives and Social Justice

    David A. Wallace

    Chapter 3: Methodologies for Archival Impact Studies

    Wendy M. Duff and Michelle Caswell

     

    Section 2

    Preface to Section Two: Categorizations and Patterns in the Case Studies

    Renée Saucier

    Chapter 4: Archives, Records, and Land Restitution in South Africa

    Anthea Josias

    Chapter 5: "Hang Onto These Words:" Aboriginal Title and the Social Meanings of Archival Custody

    Raymond Frogner

    Chapter 6: "All I Want To Know Is Who I Am": Archival Justice for Australian Care Leavers

    Joanne Evans, Frank Golding, Cate O’Neill, Rachel Tropea

    Chapter 7: Justice for the 96!: The Impact of Archives in the Fight for Justice for the 96 Victims of the Hillsborough Disaster

    Andrew Flinn and Wendy M. Duff

    Chapter 8: Social Justice and Historical Accountability in Latin America: Access to the Records of the Truth Commissions in Chile

    Joel A. Blanco-Rivera

    Chapter 9: Documenting the Fight for the City: The Impact of Activist Archives on Anti-Gentrification Campaigns

    Susan Pell

    Chapter 10: Social Justice Struggles for Rights, Equality and Identity: The Role of Lesbian and Gay Archives

    Rebecka Taves Sheffield

    Chapter 11: Social Justice and Hearing Voices: Co-Constructing an Archive of Mental Health Recovery

    Anna Sexton, Stuart Baker-Brown, Peter Bullimore, Dolly Sen and Andrew Voyce

    Chapter 12: Archives "Act Back": Re-configuring Palestinian Archival Constellations and Visions of Social Justice

    Beverley Butler

    Chapter 13: Conclusion

    David A. Wallace, Wendy M. Duff and Andrew Flinn

    Biography

    David A. Wallace is Clinical Associate Professor at the School of Information, University of Michigan. He is editor of “Archives and the Ethics of Memory Construction” (2011); co-editor of Archives and the Public Good: Accountability and Records in Modern Society (2002); and series technical editor for 12 volumes of the National Security Archive’s The Making of U.S. Policy series (1989–1992).

    Wendy M. Duff is a Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto. Her most recent research has focused on the emotional responses to archives. Recently, she has conducted impact studies of two different community  archives, the Ontario Jewish Archives and the Living Archives on Eugenics in Western Canada.

    Renée Saucier is an Archivist at the Archives of Ontario and a volunteer at The ArQuives: Canada’s LGBTQ2+ Archives. She has a graduate degree in information studies with a specialisation in archives and records management. Her paper “Medical Cartography in Ontario, 1890–1920” won the Association of Canadian Archivists’ Gordon Dodds Prize.

    Andrew Flinn is a Reader in Archival Studies and Oral History at University College London, a member of the UK Community Archives and Heritage Group and author of a number of papers relating to community-led and counter archives, including “Working with the past: making history of struggle part of the struggle” in Reflections on Knowledge, Learning and Social Movements (eds Aziz & Vally, 2018).