Archive and Database as Metaphor: Theorizing the Historical Record

Manoff, Marlene

doi:10.1353/pla.2010.0005

Cited by 28 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…Similarly, our argument has echoes with literature that deals explicitly with the ways that archives shape knowledge and how that knowledge is changing through processes of digitization (e.g. Cook 2013; Ernst 2006; 2013; Featherstone 2006; Manoff 2006, 2010; Taylor 2003). Indeed, much of that literature discusses the ontological status of archives precisely because the form of the archive is not static and keeps changing, as it responds to the transformations of the social world it seeks to archive.…”

Section: Thinking Through Objectssupporting

confidence: 51%

The Materiality of Method: The Case of the Mass Observation Archive

Moor

Uprichard

2014

Sociological Research Online

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The Mass Observation Archive presents numerous methodological issues for social researchers. The data are idiosyncratic, difficult to analyze, and the sample design is nonsystematic. Such issues seriously challenge conventional social research protocols. This article highlights a further characteristic of the archive: its unwieldy materiality. Focusing on the sensory experiences of the archive and its particular type of data, the article shows how the experience of getting ‘dirty with data’ plays a real and dynamic part of conducting Mass Observation research. Building on these observations, and drawing on two recent projects that have used the Archive, we reflect on the extent to which these issues are genuinely methodologically problematic, and how far the materiality of method and the sensuousness of data play a part in other research sites and methodological approaches too. In doing so, we emphasize the physical and logistical practicalities involved in engaging with all kinds of data, and highlight the opportunities as well as the constraints that these pose. We draw attention to the sensuous ‘cues’ and ‘hints’ offered by the Archive's materiality, and explore different ways of responding to these and their likely implications for the type and status of outputs produced. Finally, we consider the implications of our discussion for possible future attempts to digitize the contents of the Archive.

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Section: Thinking Through Objectssupporting

confidence: 51%

The Materiality of Method: The Case of the Mass Observation Archive

Moor

Uprichard

2014

Sociological Research Online

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“…In the digital age, it is important to interrogate the socio-cultural, economic, and political infrastructures and contestations that shape archives as cultural forms. Scholars have thus called attention to the ways technology has altered the idea of the archive, that to archive or use the archive is a form of political and responsible practice since technical and social design of the archive can affect usability and authenticity (Breckenridge, 2014; Jensen, 2021; Manoff, 2010; Peters and Besley, 2019). Peters and Besley (2019) argue that digital archives may be crucial to ensuring ‘informational democracies’ but Jensen (2021: 254) cautions that with traditional archives changing to reach out to new and broader user-groups, the interests of researchers may be sidelined.…”

Section: The Digital Archive and The Ashrammentioning

confidence: 99%

Redesigning the relationship between heritage and city: Insights from the Gandhi Heritage Portal, Ahmedabad

Thomas

2023

Urban Studies

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Urban heritage is often tasked with the burden of mediating city history as well as its imagined futures. In Asian contexts, these imagined futures have often been encoded as ‘smart’ urbanity while historicity is wielded as soft power. Past studies have discussed this in the context of Ahmedabad, a significant urban centre in the region of Gujarat, India, whose urban heritage has served to promote the city’s image. This article suggests that it is the digital archive, the Gandhi Heritage Portal, that potentially offers ways of disrupting the mediation of the city through heritage. With ethnographic interviews, observations, and secondary literature on the histories of the city, this article attempts a close discursive reading of the spatial, material, and ideological implications of an Ashram ‘doing’ technology through the Gandhi Heritage Portal. The article suggests that the making of the digital archive offered opportunities to dislocate heritage from neoliberal aspirations of the city.

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“…The "archival effect" or the "archival metaphor", as Marlene Manoff (2010) dubs it, provides a theoretical frame for examining the ways in which the internet and digital databases actively "bring the past into the present" (Manoff 2010, p. 386). In fact, the accumulation of information in cyberspace that is generated in hardware-software interaction of living, human beings, and digital space vividly resembles existing archival practices.…”

Section: Applied/activist Musicology and The User-generated Internet ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Activist Musicology and Informal Multimedia Archives: The Case of YouTube Channel “Serbian Composers”

Radovanović,

Bralović

2023

Arts

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The YouTube channel “Serbian Composers” was founded in 2012 by four musicology students from Belgrade. As the first page dedicated to both art music and applied music of Serbian composers on this popular video-sharing website, over the past 11 years this channel has shown itself to be an excellent platform for the promotion, multi-media archiving, research, digitalization, and preservation of Serbian music. The founders of the channel—nowadays active researchers in the field—recognized the potential of YouTube for applied musicological work and worked diligently on making this channel the most reliable online source for anyone interested in Serbian composers and their works. In this article, we elaborate on what working on this channel throughout the years has entailed. We cover the realities of both the social media and internet presence of one such endeavor and situate the research in the domain of seeing YouTube as an informal multimedia archive. We also discuss the ongoing processes of collecting music and data, digitalization and preservation, selection and categorization, and the presentation of material on YouTube and other relevant social media platforms.

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Archive and Database as Metaphor: Theorizing the Historical Record

Cited by 28 publications

References 15 publications

The Materiality of Method: The Case of the Mass Observation Archive

The Materiality of Method: The Case of the Mass Observation Archive

Redesigning the relationship between heritage and city: Insights from the Gandhi Heritage Portal, Ahmedabad

Activist Musicology and Informal Multimedia Archives: The Case of YouTube Channel “Serbian Composers”

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