Dignity by Design: Pathways to Participatory Recordkeeping Systems

“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” - Article 1 of Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The inherent respect and regard to show and provide to all fellow human beings lies at the heart of human rights frameworks, in the quest for a world in which all people have equal value and equitable opportunities to thrive and flourish. Dignity is a rich, complex and multifaceted concept that ‘places obligations on each of us to treat others well’ (Michael, 2014). It both underpins, and is a desired outcome of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, protecting and respecting human rights as ‘the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world’.

There has been a wealth of scholarship over the past decades interrogating the ways in which records and recordkeeping are a fundamental mechanism for the protection and assertion of human rights. Rights-based archival and recordkeeping scholarship has established the need to move beyond passive, post-hoc and paternalistic forms of participation embedded in extant frameworks, processes and systems, and lead the development of participatory infrastructures that support social justice and equity agendas. There is increased awareness of the need to take active steps to re-distribute archival power, and increase the capacity of our evidence and memory ecosystems to ‘harbour plurality, diversity, and difference’ (Cook, 2013, p. 117) and evolve a participatory recordkeeping paradigm.

This raises major design challenges, not just in how individuals and communities can be supported in creating their own archives, but also how they can equitably participate in institutional recordkeeping and archival systems. This encompasses the ways in which people have agency in, and control over, the recordkeeping that impacts on their lives as they interact with government and organisational systems. It incorporates the power people are given in moments of records creation, along with capabilities to actively and equitably participate in the recordkeeping processes associated with their management and use through space and time.

With greater awareness of how archival and recordkeeping infrastructures can reflect, create, amplify and/or ameliorate major societal problems (Gilliland, 2015), we are in a position to critically, proactively, and transparently consider how they might be designed and configured to better support the inherent dignity of human beings. With recognition of our non-neutrality, and increased cognisance of archival affect, we are more mindful of the need to move beyond systems that narrowly focus on the transactional and evidential, to better incorporate the spiritual and emotional dimensions of records and recordkeeping (McKemmish & Piggott, 2013).

Much participatory archival scholarship to date has tended to focus on identifying and ameliorating archival legacies of harm. While this work is undeniably important, there is a risk that ongoing and emergent recordkeeping challenges will go unaddressed, allowing systemic barriers and structural inequities to remain, and become even further entrenched. If participatory work focuses only on redressing the past, the opportunity to (re)shape the recordkeeping of the future may be missed. There is a pressing need to apply our archival expertise to the increasingly complex challenges of the digital landscape, in which the inherent instrumentalism of techno-deterministic systems and technocracies can all too easily rob people of dignity in their design, even when not the direct intent. In a data-driven, algorithmic, and incredibly fast-paced information environment, our disciplinary insights into the dynamic evidence and memory needs of individuals and communities are not just vital to preserve, protect, and advocate for human rights, but also to ensure that people are treated with dignity, fairness and respect.

We have an opportunity to lead the design of recordkeeping and archival systems that embrace love, care, trust, and kindness in concert with transparency and accountability. But how do we make this a reality?

In this special issue we seek papers exploring what we are calling dignity by design. Dignity can both underpin and emerge from recordkeeping and archival systems design. However, it cannot be assumed, and does not happen automatically; it must be done with ethical intent. We therefore invite contributions that consider the ways in which dignity in recordkeeping and archival systems can be felt, experienced, and actively realised.

Areas of focus might include:

● Explorations of the lived experience of dignity (or lack thereof) in recordkeeping and recordkeeping systems

● Decolonising praxis - how Indigenous and First Nations knowledge, worldviews, and sovereignties can be reflected in transformative recordkeeping and archiving processes and systems

● Critical praxis - how critical theories are informing participatory and community-led recordkeeping and archiving transformations to address systemic power inequities that disenfranchise marginalised communities

● Participatory recordkeeping in practice - moving beyond archival empathy to the archive as a site of participatory recordkeeping, as well as recordkeeping realisations of dignity by design

● Love and ethics of care in the configuration of recordkeeping and archival systems

Key dates

Abstract Submission deadline: February 14th, 2023

Notification of acceptance of Abstracts: February 28th, 2023

Article Submission deadline: June 30th, 2023

Review time: July to December, 2023

Submission Instructions

Abstracts (500–1,000 words) and a short bio (200 words) should be emailed to the guest editors at Violet.Hamence-Davies5@monash.edu by January 31st, 2023. The editors will notify authors whether their abstract is or is not accepted by February 28th, 2023. Authors whose abstracts are accepted will have to submit their full paper for peer review by June 30th, 2023.

• Acceptance of an abstract does not imply ultimate acceptance of the completed paper for publication, as articles for inclusion in the special issue will go through a rigorous peer review process.

• Full paper submissions will be made online via the Archival Science editorial manager system. Please select article type “SI: Dignity” upon submission of the full paper.

• Authors are encouraged to follow the journal suggestion for papers not to exceed 7,000-8,000 words and are expected to conform to the journal’s publication guidelines.

References

Cook, T. (2013). Evidence, memory, identity, and community: Four shifting archival paradigms. Archival Science, 13(2–3), 95–120.

Gilliland, A. (2015). Permeable binaries, societal grand challenges, and the roles of the twenty-first century archival and recordkeeping profession. Archifacts, December 2015, 12–30.

McKemmish, S., & Piggott, M. (2013). Toward the archival multiverse: Challenging the binary opposition of the personal and corporate archive in modern archival theory and practice. Archivaria, 76(Fall 2013), 111–144.

Michael, L. (2014). Defining dignity and its place in human rights. The New Bioethics: A Multidisciplinary Journal of Biotechnology and the Body, 20(1), 12–34. https://doi.org/10.1179/2050287714z.00000000041