Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-9pm4c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-27T03:56:07.725Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Risk and labour in the archives: archival futures from Uganda

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 August 2021

Edgar C. Taylor
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The history of archival management in Uganda reveals the foundational relationship between austerity and colonial archival institutions. This article discusses how impoverishment and self-interested editing were central to the bureaucratization of colonial archives at their founding. Extreme austerity in the wake of structural adjustment in the 1980s accelerated archival decay while adding new uncertainties to archivists’ work. Postcolonial archivists’ strategies of risk management and repair work have helped to preserve archives from potentially nefarious editing by partisan officials and publics. However, neglect and decay have also constrained the circulation of archives in public life and have reinforced colonial institutional violence. These conditions of postcolonial institutions require continuous hazardous labour from individuals embedded in the margins of state bureaucracy. This article emphasizes the backstage of archival labour and the risks that archivists navigate in preserving – and managing the public life of – relics of contentious pasts.

Résumé

Résumé

L'histoire de la gestion des archives en Ouganda révèle la relation fondamentale entre austérité et institutions archivistiques coloniales. Cet article traite du rôle central de la paupérisation et des corrections rédactionnelles privilégiant l'intérêt personnel dans la bureaucratisation des archives coloniales au moment de leur création. L'austérité extrême, dans le sillage de l'ajustement structurel des années 1980, a accéléré le déclin de l'archivistique tout en ajoutant de nouvelles incertitudes au travail des archivistes. Les stratégies de gestion du risque et le travail de réparation des archivistes postcoloniaux ont aidé à préserver des archives d'actes rédactionnels potentiellement abominables de publics et de responsables partisans. Cependant, l'abandon et la dégradation ont également restreint la circulation des archives dans la vie publique et ont renforcé la violence institutionnelle coloniale. Ces conditions d'institutions postcoloniales exigent un travail hasardeux continu de la part d'individus ancrés dans les marges de la bureaucratie d’État. Cet article met l'accent sur les coulisses du travail archivistique et sur les risques avec lesquels les archivistes doivent composer dans la préservation de reliques de passés controversés, et dans la gestion de la vie publique de celles-ci.

Type
Intellectual and cultural work in times of austerity
Information
Africa , Volume 91 , Issue 4 , August 2021 , pp. 532 - 552
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Akita, J. M. (1979) Development of the National Archives and the National Documentation Centre. Paris: UNESCO.Google Scholar
Ally, S. (2015) ‘Material remains: artifice versus artefact(s) in the archive of Bantustan rule’, Journal of Southern African Studies 41 (5): 969–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, D. (2015) ‘Guilty secrets: deceit, denial, and the discovery of Kenya's “migrated archive”’, History Workshop Journal 80 (1): 142–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Badger, A. (2012) ‘Historians, a legacy of suspicion and the “migrated archives”’, Small Wars and Insurgencies 23 (4–5): 799–807.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Banton, M. (2012) ‘Destroy? “Migrate”? Conceal? British strategies for the disposal of sensitive records of colonial administrations at independence’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 40 (2): 321–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barrett-Gaines, K. and Khadiagala, L. (2000) ‘Finding what you need in Uganda's archives’, History in Africa 27: 455–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bayart, J. (2000) ‘Africa in the world: a history of extraversion’, African Affairs 99 (395): 217–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berry, S. (1993) No Condition Is Permanent: the social dynamics of agrarian change in sub-Saharan Africa. Madison WI: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Bet-Shlimon, A. (2018) ‘Preservation or plunder? The ISIS files and a history of heritage removal in Iraq’, Middle East Research and Information Project <https://www.merip.org/mero/mero050818>..>Google Scholar
Breckenridge, K. (2012) ‘No will to know: the rise and fall of African civil registration in twentieth-century South Africa’ in Breckenridge, K. and Szreter, S. (eds), Registration and Recognition: documenting the person in world history. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Breckenridge, K. (2014) ‘The politics of the parallel archive: digital imperialism and the future of record-keeping in the age of digital reproduction’, Journal of Southern African Studies 40 (3): 499–519.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buckley, L. (2005) ‘Objects of love and decay: colonial photographs in a postcolonial archive’, Cultural Anthropology 20 (2): 249–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burton, A. (2005) ‘Introduction: archive fever, archive stories’ in Burton, A. (ed.), Archive Stories: facts, fictions, and the writing of history. Durham NC: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carswell, G. (2007) Cultivating Success in Uganda: Kigezi farmers and colonial policies. Oxford: James Currey.Google Scholar
Caswell, M. (2011) ‘“Thank you very much, now give them back”: cultural property and the fight over the Iraqi Baath Party records’, American Archivist 74 (1): 211–40.Google Scholar
Caswell, M. (2016) ‘“The archive” is not an archives: acknowledging the intellectual contributions of archival studies’, Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture 16 (1).Google Scholar
Cook, T. (2011) ‘The archive(s) is a foreign country: historians, archivists, and the changing archival landscape’, American Archivist 74 (2): 600–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edmonds, K. (1988) ‘Crisis management: the lessons for Africa from Obote's second term’ in Hansen, H. and Twaddle, M. (eds), Uganda Now: between decay and development. London: James Currey.Google Scholar
Elkins, C. (2015) ‘Looking beyond Mau Mau: archiving violence in the era of decolonization’, American Historical Review 120 (3): 852–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Emokot, E. J. C. (2003) ‘Our archives are in Entebbe, if you want to know’, New Vision, 18 June.Google Scholar
English, P. (1955) ‘Archives in Uganda’, American Archivist 18 (3): 225–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foucault, M. (1980) Power/Knowledge: selected interviews and other writings 1972–1977. New York NY: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Fowle, J. (1958) ‘Uganda Protectorate’ in Ellis, R. (ed.), Archives 1948–1955. London: British Records Association.Google Scholar
Giddens, A. (1990) The Consequences of Modernity. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Gordillo, G. (2014) Rubble: the afterlife of destruction. Durham NC: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greene, M. and Meissner, D. (2005) ‘More product, less process: revamping traditional archival processing’, American Archivist 68 (2): 208–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamilton, C. (2013) ‘Forged and continually refashioned in the crucible of ongoing social and political life: archives and custodial practices as subjects of enquiry’, South African Historical Journal 65 (1): 1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamilton, C. (2020) ‘Archive and public life’ in Cowling, L. and Hamilton, C. (eds), Babel Unbound: rage, reason and rethinking public life. Johannesburg: Wits University Press.Google Scholar
Hansen, H. (2013) ‘Uganda in the 1970s: a decade of paradoxes and ambiguities’, Journal of Eastern African Studies 7 (1): 83–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herzfeld, M. (1993) The Social Production of Indifference: exploring the symbolic roots of Western bureaucracy. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Howell, C. (2001) ‘A cupboard of surprises: working in the archives of the Church of Uganda’, History in Africa 28: 411–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hull, M. (2012) Government of Paper: the materiality of bureaucracy in urban Pakistan. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Hundle, A. (2017) ‘1970s Uganda: past, present, future’, Journal of Asian and African Studies 53 (3): 455–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ingham, K. (1958) The Making of Modern Uganda. London: George Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
Johnson, C. and Duff, W. (2004) ‘Chatting up the archivist: social capital and the archival researcher’, American Archivist 67 (1): 113–29.Google Scholar
Kalyegira, T. (2013) ‘UBC celebrates 50 years, but where are the archives?’, Daily Monitor, 3 November.Google Scholar
Kirk-Greene, A. (1980) ‘The thin white line: the size of the British colonial service in Africa’, African Affairs 79 (314): 25–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Linebaugh, R. and Bruce-Lockhart, K. (forthcoming) ‘Coloniality and power in Uganda's archives’ in Bruce-Lockhart, K., Earle, J., Musisi, N. and Taylor, E. (eds), Contesting Knowledge, Publics and Institutions in Uganda. Oxford: James Currey.Google Scholar
Luyombya, D. (2010) ‘Framework for effective public digital records management in Uganda’. PhD thesis, University College London.Google Scholar
Machava, B. and Gonçalves, E. (2021) ‘The dead archive: governance and institutional memory in independent Mozambique’, Africa 91 (4): 553–74.Google Scholar
Mbembe, A. (2002) ‘The power of the archive and its limits’ in Hamilton, C. et al. (eds), Refiguring the Archive. Cape Town: David Philip Publishers.Google Scholar
McConnell, S. (2005) ‘Historical research in eastern Uganda: local archives’, History in Africa 32: 467–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meissner, D. and Greene, M. (2010) ‘More application while less appreciation: the adopters and antagonists of MPLP’, Journal of Archival Organization 8 (3–4): 174–226.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morddel, A. (1987) ‘Records management problems in a developing country’, Records Management Quarterly 21 (4): 46, 48, 70.Google Scholar
Moss, M. (2012) ‘Where have all the files gone? Lost in action points every one?’, Journal of Contemporary History 47 (4): 860–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nangodi-Gubi, G. (1973) ‘National Archives of Uganda – brief report’, ECARBICA Journal 1 (1): 28–9.Google Scholar
NARA (2014) US National Archives and Records Administration Fiscal Year 2014–2018: strategic plan. Washington DC: National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).Google Scholar
Obote, M. (2002) ‘Democracy: Milton Obote vs Tony Blair’, New African 407: 18–20.Google Scholar
Pearce-Moses, R. (2005) A Glossary of Archival and Records Terminology. Chicago IL: Society of American Archivists.Google Scholar
Peterson, D. (2013) ‘Uganda's history from the margins’, History in Africa 40: s23–s25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peterson, D. (2014) ‘Archive work in Uganda’. Paper presented at the workshop ‘African Studies in the Digital Age’, Ann Arbor, Michigan.Google Scholar
Peterson, D. (2021) ‘Government work in Idi Amin's Uganda’, Africa 91 (4): 620–40.Google Scholar
Peterson, D. and Taylor, E. (2013) ‘Rethinking the state in Idi Amin's Uganda: the politics of exhortation’, Journal of Eastern African Studies 7 (1): 58–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peterson, D., Vokes, R., Abiti, N. and Taylor, E. (2021) ‘The unseen archive of Idi Amin: making history in a tight corner’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 63 (1): 5–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Phillips, J. (2015) ‘A defense of preservation in the age of MPLP’, American Archivist 78 (2): 470–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reid, R. (2014) ‘Ghosts in the academy: historians and historical consciousness in the making of modern Uganda’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 56 (2): 351–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rigakos, G. and Law, A. (2009) ‘Risk, realism and the politics of resistance’, Critical Sociology 35 (1): 79–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rwothungeyo, B. (2016) ‘No more use of govt documents to wrap “Rolex” – minister’, New Vision, 29 September.Google Scholar
Sato, S. (2017) ‘“Operation Legacy”: Britain's destruction and concealment of colonial records worldwide’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 45 (4): 697–719.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sebbowa, J. (2003) ‘Where are the archives?’, New Vision, 29 May.Google Scholar
Steedman, C. (1998) ‘The space of memory: in an archive’, History of the Human Sciences 11 (4): 65–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steedman, C. (2002) Dust: the archive and cultural history. New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Stoler, A. (2009) Along the Archival Grain: epistemic anxieties and colonial common sense. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, E. (2016) ‘Asians and Africans in Ugandan urban life, 1959–1972’. PhD thesis, University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Taylor, E. (2019) ‘Affective registers of postcolonial crisis: the Kampala Tank Hill party’, Africa 89 (3): 541–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, E., Rockenbach, A. and Bond, N. (2014) ‘Archives and the past: cataloguing and digitisation in Uganda's archives’ in Barringer, T. and Wallace, M. (eds), African Studies in the Digital Age. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Taylor, E., Abiti, N., Peterson, D. and Vokes, R. (forthcoming 2021) ‘Archives of Idi Amin’, History in Africa 48.Google Scholar
Tuck, M. and Rowe, J. (2005) ‘Phoenix from the ashes: rediscovery of the lost Lukiiko archives’, History in Africa 32: 403–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Verdery, K. (2014) Secrets and Truths: ethnography in the archive of Romania's secret police. Budapest: Central European University Press.Google Scholar
Vokes, R., Peterson, D. and Taylor, E. (2020) ‘Photography, evidence and concealed histories from Idi Amin's Uganda, 1971–1979’, History of Photography 44 (2–3): 151–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weld, K. (2014) Paper Cadavers: the archives of dictatorship in Guatemala. Durham NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Wiegratz, J., Martiniello, G. and Greco, E. (eds) (2018) Uganda: the dynamics of neoliberal transformation. London: Zed Books.CrossRefGoogle Scholar