Multi-Component Portfolio: Archiving for the Future of the Rural World
- Submitting institution
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School of Oriental and African Studies
: A - 22A Anthropology
- Unit of assessment
- 22 - Anthropology and Development Studies : A - 22A Anthropology
- Output identifier
- 23060
- Type
- T - Other
- DOI
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- Location
- -
- Brief description of type
- SOAS
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month
- August
- Year
- 2016
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- This output comprises interrelated elements that build uniquely on one another. This was a field-based project in India that curated and analysed anthropology from the 1950s, conducted new fieldwork in the same locations, compared notes with the original anthropologists, produced exhibitions and articles based on the material – with an overall aim of constructing a new archive for future research. The quantity of data from three fieldsites and two periods of fieldwork produced 10,000+ pages of notes, maps, surveys and images. The analysis and comparison of material across time and space required considerable intellectual and conceptual effort, time and infrastructure.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Earlier anthropological studies form a neglected archive of what every-day life was like in many parts of the world in the twentieth century. Archiving anthropology is however notoriously difficult because of the diverse range (and lack) of materials, methods, and interests of individual anthropologists. However, history is later based on what is archived – this is a political, methodological and epistemological point that opens up the question of how anthropology will survive into the future, and what responsibilities anthropologists might establish in the present. The components of this submission are bound by three orienting ideas represented by Research Outputs:
(a) High resolution ethnographic research should be in archives – no matter the practical difficulties - because of the human and everyday qualities of such material: Material: SOAS Library Archive Design and Deposit.
(b) Such research can and should be shared with a variety of audiences through the production of exhibitions: Material: Exhibition Material and Catalogue designed as the organising draft of a later deposit to the UK Data Archive.
(b) The use and production of archives leads to significant and original research that cuts across the grain of insights derived from conventional field methodologies: Material: Journal Article.
Outputs emerge from a field-based project in India that first curated and analysed anthropology from the 1950s, conducted new fieldwork in the same locations, and then produced articles and archives (first as an exhibition then as curated archive
deposits) for different audiences in India and the UK.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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