What concepts, ideas and examples from this text contribute to the theory and practice of archive ethnography? The idea that data curation practices are “performative” (p. 156) is an important consideration for the data collection and curation practices for both archive ethnography and social science research in general. As Mauthner & Gardos (2015) write, “Data curation practices are ‘performative’ in that they help bring into being the data they ostensibly preserve” (p. 156). It is not only the positionality of the archivist or structure of the archive that can influence an archive, but data curation practices themselves. In this sense, routine data curation practices that we may take for granted such as data cleaning or metadata, may themselves shape the archive and the knowledge it provides. Thus, it is essential that scholars not only critically reflect on how their positionality affects their knowledge production, but how the most routine and mundane tasks of data management during the research process can ultimately privilege a certain narrative while excluding others.
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