Developing a Typology of Human Rights Records

What makes a record a human rights record ? What types of records fall under this umbrella term? How and why might we develop a typology of such records? What is at stake—ethically, theoretically, and practically—in the ways in which and the reasons why we define and classify records as such? This article seeks to answer these questions by delineating a typology of human rights records. First, this article will provide a literature review exploring the history of conceptions of human rights records in archival studies, as well as the ongoing discussion in information studies more broadly about the politics of the organization of information. Next, this paper will outline the chosen methodology of conceptual analysis and describe the ways such methodology will be employed to de/construct the term “human rights record.” This paper will then provide a typology of human rights records, positing that such records can be examined according to five interlocking vectors: who created them, why, and when, where they are currently stewarded, and how they are being put to use. This paper will then analyze two keys examples of human rights records using the proposed typology. Finally, this paper will conclude by examining the ethical, political, and professional implications of the proposed typology and suggest ways in which this rubric can be used in the future

Revisiting a Feminist Ethics of Care in Archives: An Introductory Note

In this featured commentary, Michelle Caswell and Marika Cifor revisit their article, “From Human Rights to Feminist Ethics: Radical Empathy in Archives”* and update its insights to reflect care work in our present time of crisis. Pre-print first published online 06/11/2021   *Michelle Caswell and Marika Cifor, “From Human Rights to Feminist Ethics: Radical Empathy in Archives,” Archivaria 81 (Spring 2016): 23-43

“It Was as Much for Me As for Anybody Else”: The Creation of Self-Validating Records

How does it feel to create a record? What personal impact does it have to represent yourself in a record after being misrepresented in records created about you by someone else? Employing a participatory action research (PAR) research design alongside two community archives, this article answers these questions through empirical interview and focus group data collected from people who told and recorded their stories as part of participatory projects led by the Texas After Violence Project (TAVP) and the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA). Across interview and focus group data with storytellers from both SAADA and TAVP, many participants discussed how they were motivated to tell and record their stories for themselves, as part of their own personal journey, rather than solely for their interviewers or future listeners. At SAADA, participants discussed how storytelling enabled them to place their own personal stories within larger community narratives, not only validating the importance of their own stories but revealing the importance of culture, identity, and community in their own lives. At TAVP, participants described the process of record creation as a “cleansing” release from the trauma of incarceration. Across organizations, participants describe how telling and recording their stories for inclusion in an archives catalyzes an ontological shift in the storyteller, changing their way of being in the world and how they see their place within it. Based on these findings, the article proposes three new theoretical concepts: archival autonomy, self-validating records, and radical record creation. Archival autonomy enables marginalized people to reclaim their stories after experiences of symbolic annihilation and narrative dehumanization. Self-validating records are created in order to acknowledge and affirm the life experiences of people who have been symbolically annihilated by dominant recordkeeping practices. And finally, radical record creation describes those documentation efforts that shift power from those in positions of dominance to those in positions of vulnerability, that increase archival autonomy, and that wrest narrative control back into the hands of those from whom it has been taken, extracted, or denied. The article asserts that records can be self-validating even if no one else ever listens, uses, or activates them; their first impact is on the creators themselves

Images, Silences, and the Archival Record: An Interview with Michelle Caswell

Dr. Michelle Caswell is an Associate Professor of Archival Studies in the Department of Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she is also an affiliated faculty member with the Department of Asian American Studies and the Center for Southeast Asian Studies. Her book, Archiving the Unspeakable: Silence, Memory, and the Photographic Record in Cambodia (2014), which explores the role of archives and records in the construction of memory about the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia through a collection of mug shots taken at Tuol Sleng prison, won the 2015 Waldo Grifford Leland award for Best Publication from the Society of American Archivists. Caswell is also the co-founder of the South Asian American Digital Archive, an online repository which documents and provides access to the diverse stories of South Asian Americans

Dusting for Fingerprints: Introducing Feminist Standpoint Appraisal

This article argues that feminist standpoint epistemologies help us rethink both the process by which archival value is determined and the archivists’ role in that process, leading towards a new methodology, epistemology, and political strategy for appraisal, which I call “feminist standpoint appraisal.” Feminist standpoint appraisal inverts dominant appraisal hierarchies that value records created by those in power to justify and consolidate their power at the expense of records created by the oppressed to document and resist their oppression and imagine liberation. As such, feminist standpoint appraisal explicitly and unapologetically gives epistemological weight (thereby assigning value to) records created and preserved by, and potentially activated in service to, those individuals and communities oppressed by capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy. Furthermore, feminist standpoint appraisal shifts our thinking about the position of the archivist, from a purportedly objective “view from nowhere” (which in fact belies a dominant but unnamed white male position), towards a socially located, culturally situated agent who centers ways of being and knowing from the margins. In valuing the unique insights gleaned by people on the margins, feminist standpoint appraisal refuses the notion that archivists from oppressed communities must overcome their positionalities to meet institutional goals and professional demands for neutrality, but rather, values and leverages the insights gained from outsider status, viewing the attendant insights as assets, rather than as detriments, to the archival endeavor. Furthermore, feminist standpoint appraisal calls on archivists who inhabit dominant identities to acknowledge their oppressor standpoints and actively work to dismantle them. Pre-print first published online 08/26/201

Black Lives Still Matter for LIS: An Introduction to the Special Issue

This introduction highlights the articles in the special issue Library and Information Studies and the Mattering of Black Lives

Desenvolvendo uma tipologia de documentos relacionados aos direitos humanos

What makes a record a "human rights record"? What types of records fall under this umbrella term? How and why might we develop a typology of such records? What is at stake””ethically, theoretically, and practically””in the ways in which and the reasons why we define and classify records as such? This article seeks to answer these questions by delineating a typology of human rights records. First, this article will provide a literature review exploring the history of conceptions of human rights records in archival studies, as well as the ongoing discussion in information studies more broadly about the politics of the organization of information. Next, this paper will outline the chosen methodology of conceptual analysis and describe the ways such methodology will be employed to de/construct the term “human rights record.” This paper will then provide a typology of human rights records, positing that such records can be examined according to five interlocking  vectors: who created them, why, and when, where they are currently stewarded, and how they are being put to use. This paper will then analyze two keys examples of human rights records using the proposed typology. Finally, this paper will conclude by examining the ethical, political, and professional implications of the proposed typology and suggest ways in which this rubric can be used  in the future.¿Qué hace que un archivo sea un "archivo de derechos humanos"? ¿Qué tipos de archivos entran en este término general? ¿Cómo y por qué podríamos desarrollar una tipología de tales archivos? ¿Qué está en juego, ética, teórica y practicamente en que formas y los motivos por los cuales definimos y clasificamos los archivos como tales? Este artículo busca responder a estas preguntas delineando una tipología de archivos de derechos humanos. Primero, este artículo proporcionará una revisión de la literatura que explora la historia de las concepciones de los archivos de derechos humanos en los estudios de archivo, así como la discusión en curso en los estudios de información sobre la política de la organización de la información. A continuación, este documento describirá la metodología elegida para el análisis conceptual y describirá las formas en que se empleará dicha metodología para desarrollar / construir el término "archivo de derechos humanos". Este documento proporcionará una tipología de archivos de derechos humanos, postulando que dichos archivos deven ser examinados de acuerdo con cinco vectores entrelazados: quién los creó, por qué y cuándo, dónde están administrados actualmente y cómo se están poniendo en uso. Este documento analizará dos ejemplos clave de archivos de derechos humanos utilizando la tipología propuesta. Finalmente, este documento concluirá examinando las implicaciones éticas, políticas y profesionales de la tipología propuesta y sugerirá formas en que esta rúbrica se puede usar en el futuro.O que torna um documento de arquivo um "documento de direitos humanos"? Quais tipos de documentos se enquadram nesse termo genérico? Como e por que podemos desenvolver uma tipologia desses documentos? O que está em jogo ”“ eticamente, teoricamente e na prática ”“ quanto às formas e razões pelas quais definimos e classificamos documentos como tal? Este artigo procura responder a essas questões delineando uma proposta de tipologia de documentos de direitos humanos, apresenta revisão de literatura que explora a história das definições de documentos de direitos humanos em estudos arquivísticos, bem como a discussão atual mais ampla na Ciência da Informação sobre as políticas de organização da informação. Em seguida, delineia a metodologia para a análise conceitual descrevendo as formas pelas quais essa metodologia será empregada para construir a categoria “documento de direitos humanos”. Conclui com uma proposta de tipologia dos documentos de direitos humanos, postulando que tais documentos de arquivo podem ser examinados de acordo com cinco vetores interligados: quem os criou, por que e quando; onde estão atualmente custodiados e como estão sendo usados, com base na análise de dois exemplos importantes de documentos que retratam eventos de violações de direitos humanos usando a tipologia proposta. Finalmente, tece considerações sobre as implicações éticas, políticas e profissionais da tipologia proposta sugerindo formas de utilização dessa proposta no futuro

False promise and new hope: dead perpetrators, imagined documents and emergent archival evidence

When those accused of being high-level perpetrators of human rights abuse die before publicly yielding their secrets in legal and archival arenas, victims may simultaneously express relief about the perpetrator’s demise and grief that, along with it, possible crucial information about the past is lost forever. Although the accused do not usually directly admit their actions and the teasing out of what actually happened is dependent upon the complex processes of cross-examination of their testimony and of records and other forms of evidence, victims project such moments of revelation onto the public act of holding accused perpetrators to account. In their deaths, the accused become foreverfrom- now-on unavailable and thus unassailable evidence – in essence; they are transformed into imagined documents that can never be cross-examined. In this construction, the would-be testimony of perpetrators is given epistemological validity over that of victims, offering up the false and unfulfillable promise of establishing a singular truth. Complicating this scenario, however, is the increasingly open-ended hope offered to victims, judicial processes and historians alike by the application of new forensic methods, for example, in the examination of gravesites and human remains, and by satellite footage, that are generating additional categories of evidence. Using the juridical and archival legacies of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and the Yugoslav Wars as case studies, this article argues that when perpetrators die before giving legal testimony, survivors and victims’ families construct them as unavailable documents with imaginary agency to settle competing versions of history. Such imagined documents enter into a complex landscape of human rights archives that has heretofore been exclusively focused on tangible evidence. First, this article frames the case of Khmer Rouge leader Ieng Sary, charged with crimes against humanity and war crimes, who died before giving his testimony in a hybrid tribunal. In the face of diverse archival documentary evidence capable of presenting a more complete and complex picture of atrocities, it contemplates why survivors and victims’ family members placed high hopes on his potential testimony, essentially constructing him as a now-dead living document. Second, it explores a parallel case, that of the death of Slobodan Milošević while being tried by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), and argues that the notion of a dead perpetrator as imagined document has less sway when the public has the opportunity to hear the perpetrator defend himself, regardless of the perpetrator’s own admission (or denial) of culpability. Third, it proposes the notion of imaginary documents. It argues that such imaginary documents challenge dominant conceptions of the evidentiary qualities of tangible records and the archival legacies of trauma by insisting on a more dynamic and holistic view of records that takes the affect of survivors and victims’ family members into account