Sunday 15 February 2015

On archives, part 1

As I am now starting to write up my methodology chapter, I have been gathering articles and books on archival research. While reading through Maria Tamboukou's remarkable 2014 article on the epistolary archive of Dora Carrington, I came across the following words from Caroline Steedman, which have not left my mind since:

"[Y]ou find nothing in the Archive but stories caught half way through: the middle of things: discontinuities." 
(p.45)

These discontinuities, these absences and gaps haunt the journal extracts making up the vast part of my very own source material. Steedman's almost poetical description of what I often felt was frustrating and tedious and challenging can almost reconcile me with hours of guesswork and searching for answers in piles of crumbling paper.


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Tambokou, M. (2014): Archival research: unravelling space/time/matter entanglements and fragments. Qualitative Research, Vol. 14(5), 617­–633.

Steedman, C. (2001). Dust. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Wednesday 11 February 2015

Mapping change

The website myafricanow.com has compiled a variety of maps of the African continent showing the political and economic situation in Africa from before colonisation and since. The collection is an excellent visual representation of the changes on the continent in the last 200 years.

Africa before colonisation
Africa in 1910
African National independence
(all images from: http://www.myafricanow.com/map-of-africa-before-colonisation/)