History and philosophy of geography 2003-2004: geography's modern histories? - international dimensions, national stories, personal accounts

Unpopular Archives

“…The "politics of the archives" has drawn a great of deal of scholarly attention on this topic from historians, sociologists of science, and geographers (Bradley 1999;Osborne 1999;Lorimer and Spedding 2002;Withers 2002;Boyer 2004). Such scholars raise questions about whose voices are heard and whose are not.…”

“…A number of complementary studies, such as by Withers (2002) and Bradley (1999), call attention to the "arbitrariness" of the archive, that quality of haphazardness, disorder, and serendipity that characterizes the material that finds its way into the archive, the manner by which it does so, and the meanings that will be read from those stored documents. Withers (2002, 305;after Steedman 1998) wrote that he does not see the archive as a "straightforward expression of power.…”

“…It is also important not to overstate the extent to which the Daly papers have been "neglected," because it is the case that many major archival collections have substantial unindexed components. Moreover, the "serendipity effect" (Bradley 1999;Withers 2002)-the possibility of finding surprise nuggets of useful information-seems quite applicable in the case of the Daly archives. In the end, poor containment of his papers might be more of a manifestation of Charles Daly's unpopularity than a cause of it; but certainly such handling has not appreciably enabled or enhanced study of the nineteenth-century AGS.…”

“…I have drawn attention to a mostly forgotten public intellectual from the geographical stable and with this and other works have begun the process of marking Charles Daly's contribution to geography. Although retelling Daly's story is not entirely reducible to an arbitrary act of power and privilege on my part, it is worth keeping in mind that archives are sites of power: not least the power to tell a particular story from a particular point of view (Withers 2002;Burton 2005). Thus, it is not only the power of the researcher to resuscitate forgotten figures prominent in their day that matters.…”

“…These have to do with the type of geography he practicedhis intellectual contribution to the discipline; the care and preservation of his archived papers; and finally, the power and privilege exercised by researchers in reclaiming lost, invisible, or forgotten lives in those archives. Ultimately it is a useful and necessary exercise to trace the neglect of Charles P. Daly within histories of geography and recapture him for today's audiences-not only because of his important contributions to American geography but also because his story can shed additional light on how "disciplinary remembering" functions in geography (e.g., Lorimer 2003;Withers 2006;Maddrell 2008). …”