Social justice impact of archives: a preliminary investigation

Abstract

This article reports the first stage of a research collaboration that is elaborating the multiple relationships between archives and social justice. Specifically, it is developing narrative frameworks and diagrammatic representations to identify, understand, illustrate, and deploy the actual and potential social justice impact of archives, archivists, and archival repositories. A discussion of the broader and historical social justice landscape culminates with a working conceptualization-framework of social justice followed by an examination of the many methods and modes by which social justice can be an object of research. This is followed by an examination of the rising presence of social justice as an explicit and accelerating concern in four key English language archival journals before offering a working articulation and approach to an archival—social justice framework. A discussion of understanding and measuring impact, with specific reference to the framework of impact that we have chosen to deploy, culminates with an analysis of the social justice impact of archives as evidenced through two exemplary case studies. This is followed by a summation of key findings and a discussion of future plans to expand this research. The overall objective of these efforts is targeted toward elucidating how archives can be cast as having both positive and negative social justice consequences and demonstrating how archival work can serve social justice goals.