Archives, Documentation, and Institutions of Social Memory: Essays from the Sawyer Seminar

Archives, Documentation, and Institutions of Social Memory: Essays from the Sawyer Seminar

Archives

The Advanced Studies Center of the International Institute of the University of Michigan held a year-long Sawyer Seminar from 2000-2001 to investigate the complicated relationships between archives, forms of documentation, and societies. The program had 100 presentations over 28 sessions with representation from 15 different countries. The focus of the seminar was the role of archives in the production of knowledge. The book is divided into five sections. The first section deals with archives themselves. How does one define an archive? The second section looks at how archives are used in the production of knowledge. The third section is about social memory. These articles explore how archives create knowledge about broader social processes and activities that can be used to explore the past, such as how archives can deliberately limit, shape, or structure certain kinds of social understanding. The fourth section examines archives and political cultures, specifically Canada, the Caribbean, Western Europe, African, and European Colonial Archives. Essays cover the challenge of recovering “memory” in areas of colonialism and postcolonialism, revolutionary events, and evolving stable states. In contrast to section four, the last section covers archives and social understanding in states undergoing rapid transition, such as China, Postwar Japan, Postwar Greece, Russia, Ukraine, and the Balkins. The essays examine the relationship between state archives and governments, and they look at how politics affects archives.

Blouin Jr., Francis

Rosenberg, William R

University of Michigan Press

2006

Polk, Victoria

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license

Book

ISBN-13: 978-0472032709

ISBN-10: 0472032704

Blouin, Jr, Francis X., and William G. Rosenberg, eds. Archives, Documentation, and Institutions of Social Memory: Essays from the Sawyer Seminar. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006.