What concepts, ideas and examples from this text contribute to the theory and practice of archive ethnography?
The concept Gallon provides in terms of a “technology of recovery” is important for rethinking the ways in which digital tools and platforms such as those used in archive ethnography work can serve to challenge the racialized systemic norms present in the humanities and social sciences, providing spaces for resistance to these hegemonic structures in recovering and preserving marginalized voices. As Gallon notes, we must recognize that race itself can serve as metadata. It can shape the way we view certain groups of people, their humanity, and in digital studies, influence and determine the use of digital tools themselves. An essential consideration for archive ethnography scholars is how such digital tools can be reimagined and repurposed for critical and transformative work like that of Black Digital Studies, which serve to dismantle racialized hierarchies and reform systemic inequalities in academic knowledge production.
Digital humanities, as the article argues, is the next frontier for academic research in terms of theory, themes, 'case studies' as well as insitutional support for the same. Perhaps the frontier has already started to become the new 'normal''. Archives and ethnography are no different and archive ethnography as a method as well as field is constantly engaging with the digital humanities ( websites, digital tools, virtual installations, virtual ethnography, etc. ) Therefore, drawing upon last week's readings, the assertion put forward by the author, tha digital humanities itself is a deeply racialized construct, one that is fundamentally built on the assumption of a 'normal reality' at the expense of other realities and experiences being marginalized or silenced is deeply vital to the practice of archive ethnography itself. As the field ( and social sciences and humanities in general) increasingly move towards engaging with the digital realms as repositories of information, archives, methods and tools, there needs to be a concerted effort towards applying the theories and insights of power and race that have defined ethnographic field work and archival research to digital humanities itself, thereby drawing connections, interrogations and engagements between these various disciplines, including African American studies as argued in the article. The "recovery of technology" needs be applied at different levels and instances. The silenced should be voiced, the singular deconstructed for the plural, the centre shifted towards decentered centers and assumptions of the 'natural' pushed towards the engagements with the constructs.