The article in a nut shell seeks to push ethnographers towards thinking about ethical implications of their research and how to develop standards of transparency that are consistent with their relationship with their subjects and scholarship. In this regards the authors focuses on fourn stages of the research writing process, namely:
1. Recording and collecting data: The accuracy of any data differs based on the methods that is used to collect it. Therefore, the article pushes for transparency in how the data is collected and the methods that is used to do so, and in particular, bringing in the study of digital spaces in ethnographic research.
2. Anonymizing: Furthemore, transparency during the research and writing process should also be maintained in how researchers employ methods of anonymization in their research and in their relationship to their subjects as well as the rationale behind such decisions.
3. Data verification: Laying bare the grounds on which the research draws it conclusions or insights, the article urges ethnographers to indulge in transparency when they write their papers / books so that the readers can see and judge the validity of the source of their data
4. Destroying, preserving and sharing data: The article pushes for an active and ethical forms of collaborations between researchers in terms of sharing their data.
What concepts, ideas and examples from this text contribute to the theory and practice of archive ethnography?
In particular, I liked this quote from the piece, “In order to truly have the archive speak for itself, it should be made to speak for itself” (Vivaldi & Phillips, p. 75). I found this line to be provocative in terms of how Vivaldi and Phillips demonstrate that ethnographic materials collected through fieldwork not only serve as reflections of a memory—specific moments in time—but can be reshaped and reimagined to say something about the present, that can inspire or create memories for contemporary publics. Archives do not necessarily have to be static materials that leave the speaking to others (e.g. scholarly interpretation via academic publications), but through active arrangement like that of an installation, an archive can “speak for itself.”
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.
I think many of the concepts and ideas in this article apply broadly to the theory and practice of archival ethnography. Again, this article builds on previous assigned readings, and raises more questions and considerations for archival ethnography than perhaps offers concrete guidelines for archiving anthropological assets. One of the assertions of this article that I found especially compelling was that an archive is never finished/fixed, that an archive is both alive and “haunted” through creation, immersion, new questions, and dispersal. The authors introduced the term “multi-inhabited” to describe how archives are animated and spirited, never embodying a single-voiced or single-bodied. And that even the singular “body” of an archive may defy its intended purpose and gives way to many experiences and voices. Additionally, the use of multimodal techniques in archival installations may invigorate the archive, body of work, and assets by lifting tensions and reaching a broader audience.
“Most human constructs are these kinds of ‘things’ that are not things” (Vidali and Phillips 2020, 69). Vidali and Phillips compel the reader to think of an archival exhibit as a kind of living body with centripetal and centrifugal modes of movement; the archival exhibit then becomes an immersive site of encounter for its listeners, readers, and participants. Their work contributes to practices toward decolonizing archival ethnography – through using multimodal media and through considering the archival exhibit as ever-changing and as a practice designed for human, and community, engagement. The authors emphasize the importance of “hoarding” – letters, recordings, artifacts, and more, as a practice of preservation and as an opportunity to provide an immersive connection for the exhibit’s participants.
“Most human constructs are these kinds of ‘things’ that are not things” (Vidali and Phillips 2020, 69). Vidali and Phillips compel the reader to think of an archival exhibit as a kind of living body with centripetal and centrifugal modes of movement; the archival exhibit then becomes an immersive site of encounter for its listeners, readers, and participants. Their work contributes to practices toward decolonizing archival ethnography – through using multimodal media and through considering the archival exhibit as ever-changing and as a practice designed for human, and community, engagement. The authors emphasize the importance of “hoarding” – letters, recordings, artifacts, and more, as a practice of preservation and as an opportunity to provide an immersive connection for the exhibit’s participants.
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.
A number of creative concepts and ideas are pushed forward by the authors in the essay as well as from their own work. One example could be Vidali's efforts to 'release' the archive from capture by reaching out to individuals and organizations that may have interest in their collected material, locating the descendants of the individuals that they recorded as a means to 'give back' and the lauch of the Bemba Online Project as a repository of a continously changing archive.
Similarly, Philips efforts for the archive to speak for itself by "splicing" and remixing David Yumba previously recorded statements and stule of rhetoric in order to produce and read out scripted letters so as to reproduce and bring the listeners as close as possible to Yumba's workplace is unconventional but speaks to the idea of interpretating and connecting to an archive in more ways than one as well as bring insights for the present by reconnecting to the past (s). Finally, the use of physical and interactive installations in order to bring about the engagement of the audience not just as a silent observer but an active and intrepretative one in order to produce 'new' meanings collectively and thereby bringing in more voices to the continued production of the archive ( instead of only the singular one of the archivist or ethnographer )
What concepts, ideas and examples from this text contribute to the theory and practice of archive ethnography?
In particular, I like the quote Rizzo uses, citing scholar Kim Gallon, that “the black digital humanities help to “unmask the racialized systems of power at work in how we understand the digital humanities as a field” (p. 1). It made me think of the ways this approach could be applied to archive ethnography. For example, one of the assigned readings for the course is a book by Safiya Noble titled Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. As such works demonstrate, we must question how the operation of digital tools like search engines may be informed by or reproduce racist structures that influence knowledge production. Similar to the Mauthner & Gardos (2015)’s piece, not only are data curation practices in need of questioning when it comes to archives, but the digital tools we use and create as researchers as well.