A question that this text suggests for my own work is how do archives advance ethnography as a method? In what ways do combining archives with ethnography and the practice of each strengthen or complicate the situatedness of myself as a researcher and the ethics involved?
The text builds on ethnography by linking it to archives as a feasible method.
The article primarily revolves around a more nuance and multi - modal approach to archives. Essentially it argues that archives are not bounded or fixed entities that are constructed primarily of material documents and a single interpretation of a researcher using them. Instead, the authors put forwar the argument that archives are in a constant process of negotiation between institutional factors that seek to bound it within a framework and decentralized actors and forces that push for diversity.
A number of creative concepts and ideas are pushed forward by the authors in the essay as well as from their own work.
“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.
“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.
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.
While not perhaps the intended argument of the authors, one of my main takeaways from this article was affirmation that other researchers come up against a similar dilemma which is the desire to hoard research materials but the lack of desire to formally and systematically archive the assets.
What is the main argument, narrative, or e/affect?In this piece, Vidali & Phillips struggle with what seems to be a common theme in archive ethnography, how to bring to life an archive from countless hours of fieldnotes and collected materials? As the authors note, anthropologists often have hundreds of hours of recordings, images, fieldnotes, documents, and other collected materials produced through their ethnographic fieldwork.
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).
