The place of theory in archival practice

Archivaria

Volumn 47, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 1-26

  Mortensen, Preben ^a  

^a Municipality of West Vancouver ^*  (Canada)

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EID: 0007035476     PISSN: 03186954     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (59)

1. See, for example, John W. Roberts, "Archival Theory: Myth or Banality, " American Archivist 53 (1990) and John W. Roberts, "Practice Makes Perfect, Theory Makes Theorists, " Archivaria 37 (Spring 1994). My evidence for the fact that this view is widely shared stems from conversations with archivists and archives students at the University of British Columbia. The assumption may, however, have more than anecdotal support. One of the results of a recent survey conducted by the Archives Association of British Columbia (AABC) is that most respondents do not want an increase in discussions of archival theory at the annual conferences of the AABC. One respondent comments that "I'm not sure of the value of [such] a conference for members more interested in workshops and hands-on guidance. Too much theory. We don't need to be a mini-ACA. " Archives Association of British Columbia, Needs Assessment Survey Report (Vancouver, 1999), response to question number 99.
2. Luciana Duranti, "Archival Science, " in A. Kent, ed., Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science 59 (1996), p. 1.
3. Terry Eastwood, "Nailing a Little Jelly to the Wall of Archival Studies, " Archivaria 35 (1993), p. 233.
4. "Archival science constitutes the foundation of the archival discipline. of archival history. and of archival economy. " Duranti, "Archival Science, " p. 1.
5. See Luciana Duranti, "The Odyssey of a Records Manager, " ARMA Quarterly (July and October 1989) and "The Record: Where Archival Universality Resides, " Archival Issues 19 (1994), pp. 83-94. Verne Harris criticizes this view of archives and their history in "Claiming Less, "Delivering More: A Critique of Positivist Formulations on Archives in South Africa, " Archivaria 44 (Fall 1997), pp. 133-35.
6. Duranti, "Archival Science, " p. 5. See also page 12. The emphasis on scientific is Duranti's. The latter emphasis is added.
7. Roy Schaeffer, "From Craft to Profession: The Evolution of Archival Education and Theory in North America" Archivaria 37 (Spring 1994), p. 31. Second set of italics added. See also Harris, "Claiming Less, " and Verne Harris, "Redefining Archives in South Africa: Public Archives and Society in Transition, " Archivaria 42 (Fall 1996).
8. "Much Ado About Shelving, " American Archivist 50 (Winter 1987), p. 74, cited by Roy Schaeffer in "From Craft to Profession, " p. 26.
9. Roberts, "Archival Theory, " p. 111.
10. Luciana Duranti, "Diplomatics: New Uses for an Old Science. (Part IV), " Archivaria 31 (Winter 1990). p. 14.
11. See, for example, Roberts, "Practice Makes Perfect, " pp. 113-15.
12. Luciana Duranti, "Diplomatics: New Uses for an Old Science. (Part IV), " Archivaria 31 (Winter 1990). p. 14.
13. Frank G. Burke, "The Future Course of Archival Theory in the United States, " American Archivist 44 (1981), p. 40.
14. Eric Ketelaar, "Archival Theory and the Dutch Manual, " Archivaria 41 (Spring 1996), p. 35.
15. "An archives is chameleon-like.
16. Luciana Duranti, "Diplomatics: New Uses for an Old Science. (Part IV), " Archivaria 31 (Winter 1990). p. 14.
17. Ronald R.E. Weissman, "Archives and the New Information Architecture of the Late 1990s, " American Archivist 57, no. 1 (Winter, 1994), p. 20.
18. See particularly his arguments about "family resemblance" in Philosophical Investigations, sections 65 ff. (Oxford, 1953).
19. This was suggested by Burke. See Roberts, "Archival Theory, " p. 117.
20. Luciana Duranti, "Diplomatics: New Uses for an Old Science. (Part IV), " Archivaria 31 (Winter 1990). p. 14.
21. See Carl G. Hempel, Philosophy of Natural Science (Englewood Cliffs, 1966), especially chap. 5.
22. Georg Henrik von Wright points out that "it seems almost an irony of fate that the fullest and most lucid formulation of the positivist theory of explanation should have been stated in connection with the subject matter for which, obviously, the theory is least suited, viz. history. " Georg Henrik von Wright, Explanation and Understanding (Ithaca, New York, 1971), pp. 10-11. Though not in regard to Hempel, R.G. Collingwood had already noted that positivism had no place for history. In the heyday of positivism, history and the philosophy of history were neglected. Positivism's inability to account for the development of historiography was, for Collingwood, a decisive reason to reject it. See R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (Oxford, 1956 [first published in 1946]), p. 232 ff.
23. Terry Eastwood, "What is Archival Theory and Why is it Important?, " Archivaria 37 (Spring 1994), p. 123.
24. See Terry Eastwood, "Towards a Social Theory of Appraisal, " in Barbara L. Craig, ed., The Archival Imagination: Essays in Honour of Hugh A. Taylor (Ottawa, 1992), pp. 71-72 and 80, for references to Ayer. I argue below that the distinction between facts and interpretation, seen by Eastwood as the basis for rational behaviour, cannot be maintained. It is precisely the impossibility of maintaining this distinction that caused the demise of positivism.
25. According to W.H. Newton-Smith, "Observational terms were thought to be directly applicable to experience.
26. Norwood Russell Hanson, Patterns of Discovery: An Inquiry into the Conceptual Foundations of Science (Cambridge, England, 1961).
27. Luciana Duranti, "Diplomatics: New Uses for an Old Science. (Part IV), " Archivaria 31 (Winter 1990). p. 14.
28. Hanson, Patterns of Discovery, p. 20. See also Feyerabend, Against Method, p. 58.
29. Newton-Smith, Rationality of Science, p. 22.
30. See the instances cited in, for example, Karin D. Knorr-Cetina, The Manufacture of Knowledge: An Essay on the Constructivist and Contextual Nature of Science (Oxford, 1981), and Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar, Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts (London, England, 1979), particularly chap. 4.
31. Steven Rose, The Making of Memory: From Molecules to Mind (New York, 1993), p. 8.
32. Luciana Duranti, "Diplomatics: New Uses for an Old Science. (Part IV), " Archivaria 31 (Winter 1990). p. 14.
33. See Knorr-Cetina, The Manufacture of Knowledge, for example, pp. 59, 74. See also the essays collected in Stephen Jay Gould, The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History (New York, 1980). These very readable and entertaining essays all "contravene the usual mythology about scientific practice-that facts are 'hard' and primary and that scientific understanding increases by patient collection and sifting of these objective bits of pure information. " Science is "a human activity, motivated by hope, cultural prejudice, and the pursuit of glory, yet stumbling in its erratic path toward a better understanding of nature" (pp. 115-16). Gould's The Mismeasure of Man (New York, 1981) is a detailed demonstration of the influence of cultural prejudices on scientific practice in psychology, especially in the area of intelligence testing. For an instance of how general cultural ideas and assumptions can influence the development of science, see Gerald Holton, "Einstein and the Cultural Roots of Modern Science, " Dædalus 127 (Winter 1998), pp. 1-44.
34. According to Rose, "In what I actually do in the laboratory, I am trapped in the artefactual world mediated by machinery. I do not observe nature, as symbolized by my chicks [Rose uses chicks for his experiments], in an unmediated way. Like all scientific findings, mine are actually nothing but readings on meters, printouts on papers, numbers derived from machines. which I manipulate to extract meaning and which I then endeavour to extrapolate back to stand for, to represent, deductions about the behaviour of molecules, cells and organisms in the real world. " Rose, Making of Memory, p. 272.
35. It is beyond the scope of this essay to go into detail about the developments in post-positivist philosophy of science, but, in addition to works referred to above and below, central contributions to the debate can be found in the following works: Richard J. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Practice (Philadelphia, 1985).
36. Hanson, Patterns of Discovery, p. 91.
37. See Hilary Putnam, "The Corroboration of Theories, " in Mathematics, Matter and Method (Cambridge, England, 1975).
38. According to Rose, "Once a society and its journal exist, a research group has achieved a sort of corporate identity.
39. Burke, "Archival Theory, " p. 43, cited by Roberts in "Practice Makes Perfect, " p. 116.
40. For a recent discussion of this issue, see Lorraine Daston, "Fear and Loathing of the Imagination in Science, " Dædalus 127 (Winter 1998), pp.73-95.
41. Putnam, Many Faces of Realism, p. 72.
42. See particularly his "Why reason can't be naturalized, " chap. 13, in Hilary Putnam, Realism and Reason.
43. Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (New York, 1960), chap. 2.
44. Trevor Livelton, Archival Theory, Records, and the Public (Langham, Md. and London, 1996), pp. 31, 35. Emphasis added.
45. See Michael A. Lutzker, "Max Weber and the Analysis of Modern Bureaucratic Organization: Notes Toward a Theory of Appraisal, " American Archivist 45 (1982), pp. 119-130. Lutzker says that Weber's model of bureaucracy has been "incorporated into the professional archivist's consciousness" (p. 124). Richard Brown likewise points out that the "prevailing conception of bureaucracy and administrative organization found in archival literature continues to be grounded in the hierarchical framework of relations established by the elementary principles of Weberian sociology. " "Macro Appraisal Theory and the Context of the Public Records Creator, " Archivaria 40 (Fall 1995), p. 132.
46. Brown, "Macro Appraisal Theory, " p. 133.
47. See Terry Cook, "When the Past is Prologue: A History of Archival Ideas Since 1898, and the Future Paradigm Shift, " Archivaria 43 (1997), pp. 20-30.
48. Verne Harris, "Redefining Archives in South Africa, " p. 15.
49. The situation of archives in South Africa provides a dramatic illustration of this. Though individual archivists were not always willing co-operators with the apartheid system, the State Archives Service in South Africa was, in the period of apartheid, an integral part of the apartheid system. The collapse of the apartheid system necessitated a reorientation of archives in South Africa, and has been the impetus for a flurry of theoretical discussions. See Harris, "Redefining Archives in South Africa. "
50. As Terry Cook points out, "Archival thinking over the [twentieth] century should be viewed as constantly evolving, ever mutating as it adapts to radical changes in the nature of records, record-creating organizations, record-keeping systems, record uses, and the wider cultural, legal, technological, social, and philosophical trends in society. " Cook, "When the Past is Prologue, " p. 20.
51. Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, Richard Nice, trans. (Stanford, 1990), p. 69. Beliefs guiding a practice may not necessarily be of the "head" but also be responsible for "bodily attitudes, " according to Bourdieu. This is particularly emphasized by the work of Norbert Elias on the process of civilization. See Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process (Oxford, 1981).
52. Duranti, "The Records, " p. 92.
53. Luciana Duranti, "Diplomatics: New Uses for an Old Science. (Part IV), " Archivaria 31 (Winter 1990). p. 14.
54. See, for an influential philosophical example, Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (Cambridge, England, 1989), Part I, "Contingency. " See also Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Contingencies of Value: Alternative Perspective for Critical Theory (Cambridge, England, 1988).
55. Roberts, "Practice Makes Perfect, " p. 112.
56. For discussions of the connection between social theory and history, see Peter Burke, History and Social Theory (Ithaca, 1993)
57. Dennis Smith, The Rise of Historical Sociology (Cambridge, England, 1991).
58. Craig, "Archives Theory, Archival Practice, Archives History, " pp. 42-43.
59. Trevor Livelton, Archival Theory, p. 47.