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Abstract
This paper defines and delineates the concept of participatory microhistory through an examination of the South Asian American Digital Archive’s First Days Project, a community-based online project that solicits short audio, video and written narratives about South Asians immigrants’ first day in the United States. First, this paper provides a brief overview of the history of the South Asian American Digital Archive and the First Days Project. Next, this paper highlights three important functions filled by participatory microhistory projects: they generate new records that represent perspectives not commonly found in archives, they convey an important sense of emotion and affect, and they effectively solicit community participation in the archival endeavour. Throughout, this paper explores participatory microhistory projects as tools to harness technology for community empowerment and build support for archives.
Notes
1. SAADA, ‘First Days: FAQ’, available at <http://www.saadigitalarchive.org/firstdays/faq>, accessed 22 October 2013.
2. SAADA defines South Asia very broadly; the collection reflects the vast range of experiences of those in the United States who trace their heritage to Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the many South Asian diaspora communities across the globe.
3. For a discussion of impartiality rooted in the dominant Western archival tradition, see Terry Eastwood, ‘What is Archival Theory and Why is it Important?’ Archivaria, no. 37, Spring 1994, pp. 122–130.
4. Shannon Faulkhead, ‘Connecting Through Records: Narratives of Koorie Victoria’, Archives & Manuscripts, vol. 37, no. 2, p. 67.
5. A Gilliland and S McKemmish, ‘Building an Infrastructure for Archival Research’, Archival Science, vol. 4, nos 3–4, 2004, p. 184.
6. Ibid. For an example, see T Cook, ‘Appraisal Methodology: Macro-Appraisal and Functional Analysis. Part A: Concepts and Theory’ and ‘Part B: Guidelines for Performing an Archival Appraisal on Government Records’, 2002, available at <http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/government/disposition/007007-1035-e.html>, accessed 22 October 2013.
7. The American Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 gave preference to highly educated immigrants, resulting in a ‘brain drain’ from South Asia to the US, and the common American stereotyping of Indians as quiet, hard-working, apolitical professionals. For more information see Vijay Prashad, The Karma of Brown Folk, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2000.
8. ‘South Asia’ emerged as a term during the Cold War and reflects the interests of US military intelligence in the region. It is by no means meant to convey political coherence; many of the nation-states included under the rubric of South Asia have since engaged in armed conflict. While many first-generation immigrants from the region are more likely to identify along nationalist, religious, linguistic or regional lines, the second generation is likely to identify as South Asian American. For more information on the complicated issue of identity among South Asian Americans, and the role archives like SAADA play in identity formation, see Michelle Caswell, ‘Inventing New Archival Imaginaries: Theoretical Foundations for Identity-Based Community Archives’, in D Daniel and A S Levi (eds), Identity Palimpsests: Archiving Ethnicity in the U. S. and Canada, Litwin Books, Los Angeles, 2014, forthcoming.
9. For more information on Indians in Trinidad, see Viranjini Munasinghe, Callaloo or Tossed Salad? East Indians and the Cultural Politics of Identity in Trinidad, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 2001.
10. A Flinn, M Stevens and E Shepherd, ‘Whose Memories, Whose Archives? Independent Community Archives, Autonomy, and the Mainstream’, Archival Science, vol. 9, nos 1–2, 2009, pp. 71–86.
11. Kamal Badhey’s interview with Basdeo Mangal is a good example of this. SAADA, ‘First Days: Basdeo Mangal’, available at <http://www.saadigitalarchive.org/firstdays/story/3019>, accessed 22 October 2013.
12. The term ‘microhistory’ has been used by historians for at least the past 40 years. See Carlo Ginzburg, ‘Microhistory: Two or Three Things That I Know About it’, in Threads and Traces: True False Fictive, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2012, pp. 193–214.
13. Alistair Thomson, ‘Oral History and Community History in Britain: Personal and Critical Reflections on Twenty-Five Years of Continuity and Change’, Oral History, vol. 36, no. 1, 2008, p. 97.
14. While definitions of community are contextual and shifting, Flinn, Stevens and Shepherd define community as ‘any manner of people who come together and present themselves as such, and a “community archive” is the product of their attempts to document the history of their commonality’ (p. 75).
15. M Krause and E Yakel, ‘Interaction in Virtual Archives: The Polar Bear Expedition Digital Collections Next Generation Finding Aid’, American Archivist, vol. 70, no. 2, 2007, pp. 282–314.
16. I Huvila, ‘Participatory Archive: Towards Decentralised Curation, Radical User Orientation, and Broader Conextualisation of Records Management’, Archival Science, vol. 8, no. 1, 2008, pp. 15–36.
17. K Shilton and R Srinivasan, ‘Participatory Appraisal and Arrangement for Multicultural Archival Collections’, Archivaria, no. 63, Spring 2007, pp. 87–101.
18. Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, ‘911 Digital Archive’, available at <http://911digitalarchive.org>, accessed 22 October 2013. Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, ‘Hurricane Archive’, available at <http://www.hurricanearchive.org>, accessed 22 October 2013.
19. Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, ‘Bracero Archive’, available at <http://braceroarchive.org>, accessed 22 October 2013.
20. National Archives of the United Kingdom, ‘Moving Here’, available at <http://www.movinghere.org.uk>, accessed 17 December 2013.
21. A more detailed history of the oral history movement is beyond the scope of this paper. See Donald A Ritchie, Doing Oral History, Oxford University Press, New York, 2003, pp. 19–46.
22. H Zinn, ‘Secrecy, Archives and the Public Interest’, The Midwestern Archivist, vol. 2, no. 2, 1977, pp. 14–26. Studs Terkel, Working, Pantheon, New York, 1972.
23. HW Samuels, ‘Who Controls the Past’, American Archivist, vol. 49, no. 2, Spring 1986, p. 122.
24. Ibid., p. 120.
25. We do not mean to imply that the archivist has no role in participatory microhistory projects, but rather this role shifts from appraiser to conceiver of the project, designer of the system that enables the project and allows access to it, and promoter and advocate of the project.
26. Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History, Beacon, Boston, 1995.
27. Zinn, pp. 14–26. A recent survey conducted by the Society of American Archivists revealed that 89% of archivists in the US self-identify as white. Society of American Archivists, ‘Membership Needs & Satisfaction Survey’, available at <http://files.archivists.org/membership/surveys/saaMemberSurvey-2012r2.pdf>, accessed 13 December 2013.
28. Ibid., RS Carter, ‘Of Things Said and Unsaid: Power, Archival Silences, and the Power in Silence’, Archivaria, no. 61, Spring 2006, pp. 215–233.
29. Thomson, pp. 95–104.
30. By ‘archivation’, I mean deemed worthy of inclusion in an archives. V Harris, ‘Genres of the Trace: Memory, Archives and Trouble’, Archives and Manuscripts, vol. 40, no. 3, 2012, pp. 147–157.
31. There has been much discussion of late about reading against the grain of bureaucratic records to uncover the voices of the enslaved, colonised or otherwise marginalised. See J Bastian, ‘Reading Colonial Records Through an Archival Lens: The Provenance of Place, Space, and Creation’, Archival Science, vol. 6, nos 3–4, 2006, pp. 267–284. See also C Hurley, ‘Parallel Provenance: What if Anything is Archival Description?’ Archives and Manuscripts, vol. 33, no. 1, 2005, pp. 110–145.
32. SAADA, ‘First Days: C.M. Naim’, available at <http://www.saadigitalarchive.org/firstdays/story/3187>, accessed 22 October 2013.
33. SAADA, ‘First Days: Bernard Despot’, available at <http://www.saadigitalarchive.org/firstdays/story/3182>, accessed 22 October 2013.
34. S McKemmish, ‘Evidence of Me’, Archives and Manuscripts, vol. 24, no. 1, May 1996, pp. 28–45. See also S McKemmish, ‘Evidence of Me... in a Digital World’, in I, Digital: Personal Collections in the Digital Era, Christopher A Lee (ed.), Society of American Archivists, Chicago, 2011, pp. 115–148.
35. SAADA, ‘First Days: Ali Khataw’, available at <http://www.saadigitalarchive.org/firstdays/story/2854>, accessed 22 October 2013.
36. SAADA, ‘First Days: Tahrat Naushaba Shahid’, available at <http://www.saadigitalarchive.org/firstdays/story/3063>, accessed 22 October 2013.
37. While such vivid descriptions of emotion might have been written down in letters sent back home, it is unlikely that such letters would wind up in archives, particularly in archives in the US.
38. See Eve Kosofsky Sedwick, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity, Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 2003 and Sara Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion, Routledge, New York, 2004. For a broader sweep, see Melissa Gregg and Gregory J Seigworth (eds), The Affect Theory Reader, Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 2010.
39. The World, ‘First Days: South Asian Americans Share Their Stories of Arrival in America’, available at <http://www.theworld.org/2013/08/first-days-south-asian-americans-share-stories-of-their-first-days-in-america/>, accessed 22 October 2013.
40. Ibid.
41. For a full listing of press coverage, visit SAADA, ‘Press’, available at <http://www.saadigitalarchive.org/press>, accessed 22 October 2013.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Michelle Caswell
Michelle Caswell is Assistant Professor of Archival Studies in the Department of Information Studies at UCLA and a co-founder and board member of the South Asian American Digital Archive. She is the author of Archiving the Unspeakable: Silence, Memory, and the Photographic Record in Cambodia, as well as numerous articles in Archival Science, American Archivist, Archivaria.
Samip Mallick
Samip Mallick is the executive director and co-founder of the South Asian American Digital Archive.