Skip to main content

Archive Ethnography: What concepts, ideas and examples from this text contribute to archive ethnography?

What concepts, ideas and examples from this text contribute to the theory and practice of archive ethnography? In the piece, I liked how the author combines the concepts of both Stoler (2009) and Trouillot (1995) by encouraging scholars to read along the grain and across it. Citing Trouillot (1995, p. 29), Zeitlyn argues that such an approach helps us “think about the power plays affecting silences, determining which stories get told and which leave traces.” Referring to the work of Guha (1983), Zeitlyn claims we can focus on understanding both “how records were created (reading along the grain) to recover history from below (reading across the grain)” (p. 465). Though I am a bit unsure of what it means to read along and across the grain, I think this approach is a helpful reflective practice that can be used in archive ethnography to reexamine how the creation and curation processes of archives affect the stories they tell and, importantly, who gets to “speak.”   

Everyone can view this content
On