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Archival Research

In: The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Business and

Management Research Methods: Methods and Challenges

By: Albert J. Mills & Jean Helms Mills

Pub. Date: 2019

Access Date: August 16, 2021

Publishing Company: SAGE Publications Ltd

City: 55 City Road

Print ISBN: 9781526429278

Online ISBN: 9781526430236

DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781526430236

Print pages: 32-45

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Archival Research

Albert J. Mills Jean Helms Mills

Introduction

At its simplest, archival research can be said to involve the study of collections of documents (e.g.

newsletters, annual reports, memoranda) and artifacts (e.g. uniforms, photographs) to gain an understanding

of a selected organization (e.g. British Airways), leader (e.g. Sir Colin Marshall), or professional group (e.g.

flight attendants). However, this ignores the fact that, like other research methods, archival research is

informed by underlying research philosophies. In this chapter, we focus on three major research philosophies

– modernist, postmodernist, and amodernist – and how they inform and shape archival research. Where

possible we draw on all aspects of our own research because over the years we have moved from an initial

modernist approach, to a postmodernist approach and, quite recently, an amodernist approach.1

To begin with our three major approaches: in brief, the modernist approach views the past as having an

ontological basis in fact, whose factual traces can be found through – among other means – a methodical

search through archival documents. The resulting narrative (or storied account) is an attempt to provide a

history of what really or actually happened in the past (Elton, 1967). The postmodernist approach2 views the

past as ontologically unavailable. People and events in the past were real at the time but we can only re-

present the past through narratives that rely on the dominant understanding of those people and events at

the time but also in the present. In other words, there is a disconnect between the past and history (Munslow,

2010): the past is what happened before now and history is the attempt to reproduce the past through

narrative (a story of events) or chronicles (a description of events). Finally, the amodernist approach focuses

on how ‘knowledge of the past’ is socially constructed through a series of human (e.g. historians) and non-

human (e.g. archives) actors to create a sense of history (Durepos & Mills, 2012; see also Chapter 26 of this

volume).

For respective modernist, postmodernist, and amodernist accounts, see Elton (1969, 1991), Jenkins (1991),

and Durepos and Mills (this volume). For useful overviews of the field see Bryman et al. (2011), Durepos

(2015), Jenkins (1995), and Rowlinson et al. (2014).

• Before doing archival research, you should become familiar with some of the key ontological and

epistemological debates surrounding the understanding of history and the past.

What do we mean by archival research?

Before you consider archival research, you need to have an understanding not only of what you are looking

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for but why and how you are looking for it. You need to know something about recent debates in management

and organizational history about the nature of the past and history. A good place to start is Booth and

Rowlinson's (2006) discussion of the ‘historic’ turn in management and organizational history. This is useful

not only for understanding debates around what constitutes the past and history but also in discussing the

range of methods and methodological approaches associated with different approaches. See also the debate

between Toms and Wilson (2010) and Taylor et al. (2009).

Different approaches to history and the past shape not only what to look for ‘in the’ archives but also how

to study archival materials and where to look for archives. For example, modernist historians tend to view

archives as ‘an empirical data corpus’ of artifacts and documents that are usually associated with a physical

location (McHoul & Grace, 2003, p. 30). These locations are often referred to as an archive where the

purpose is to collect together a number of artifacts around a specific topic. It is a place where elements,

or traces, of the past can be studied through a search of documents (e.g. in-house newsletters) and other

artifacts (e.g. airline uniforms). Postmodernists, on the other hand, are not simply looking for documents and

other artifacts from the past but also the complex system of practices that underlie the way of collecting

and ordering materials in an archive. Arguably, these practices ‘govern one's manner of perceiving, judging,

imagining and acting’ (Flynn, 1996, p. 30) in ways that constitute an ‘unconscious structuring of discourse’

(May, 2006, pp. 38–9). This can influence what you come to view as (legitimate) knowledge and what counts

as evidence of that knowledge. The amodernist focus is on gaining an understanding of the relationships

between human (e.g. flight attendants), non-human (e.g. uniforms), and non-corporeal (e.g. airline stories)

actants in the creation of a particular phenomenon (e.g. the association of females with flight attending

and males as pilots).3 The essential idea here is to understand the production of knowledge (for example,

discriminatory notions of women's roles at work) by tracing the relationships that come to constitute and

maintain that ‘knowledge'.

These three approaches generate different views of what constitutes an archive. From a modernist

perspective, it can be argued that:

Archival records are an invaluable tool of data gathering … that is focused on the past and its impact

on the present. The careful analysis of archival records can provide valuable information of the life,

concerns, and aspirations of individuals and groups, as well as on the activity, structure, mission,

and goals of associations, organizations, and institutions. (Stan, 2010, p. 29, emphasis added)

This is a clear modernist account of the value of archival research. The postmodernist will contend that

this type of account lures us into thinking that archival records, in themselves, embody some sort of fixed

elements of empirical truth that can be uncovered through methodical techniques of collection and analysis

of information-bearing data.

While modernists tend to talk about archives as physical locations that house a particular collection of

documents and artifacts (e.g. the Pan American World Airways Collection at the Otto Richter Library of the

University of Miami), postmodernists view ‘the archive’ as something broader. Thus, for example, Rostis

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(2015, p. 33), in his Foucauldian study of the discourse of humanitarianism, notes that:

The archive in its broadest sense is everywhere and not restricted to the four walls of an archival

office of any one organization. Therefore, traces of constructs such as madness, discipline, or

sexuality should be found in multiple places; Foucault's genealogies draw upon this feature and

sweep quite broadly across sources, historical periods, and people.

In contrast, the amodernist views the archive – be it a specific building or broader social phenomena – as a

potential nexus for the production of knowledge, a site of networked relations to be explored and uncovered.

This provides us with at least three forms of archive. The first is a formally constituted collection of documents

and other artifacts at and as an ‘archive'. The second refers to a number of sites, including physically

designated archives, which are thought to constitute the traces of a pattern of ideas and practices that

influence our understandings of the past. The third refers to a site of outcomes of networked relationships.

These various sites are thought to constitute a complex set of underlying rules or an archive. Following Mills

and Helms Mills (2011), we will use the term archive to refer to the modernist notion and archive to refer to

the postmodernist notion: either can be the starting point of a site of networked outcomes for the amodernist

depending on where they focus their attention.

Despite the fundamental differences in approach you will still find modernist, postmodernist, and amodernist

researchers in formally designated archives undertaking analyses of documents and other artifacts. Rostis

(2015), for example, included in his archival research, analysis of documents at the Museum of the

International Red Cross in Geneva.

For simplicity sake, the focus of the rest of this chapter will be on formally constituted archives, defined as a

collection of materials that serve to provide traces of the past of a particular organization (e.g. Air Canada4),

organizational leader and other members (e.g. Juan Trippe, the former CEO of Pan Am, and female members

of the same airline), or social phenomenon (e.g. Aviation and Space). This will allow us to focus on the value

of documents, which is an important focus of various forms of archival research.

Why do archival research?

The question of the value of archival research is often tied up with questions about the value of history and

the past. If history and the past are important for business studies then, the argument goes, archives are an

important source for tracing what happened before now.

Modernist

First, let us briefly review the argument for the importance of history and the past from the modernist

perspective. Professor Alfred Kieser (1994), who has played an important role in encouraging an ‘historic turn’

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in Management and Organization Studies (MOS), makes four key points for the value of history and the past:

1. ‘In order to understand contemporary institutions it is important to know something of their

historical development’ (p. 609).

2. Historical analysis can reduce the ideological biases embedded in current ‘fashionable trends’

in MOS (p. 610).

3. We need to ‘interpret existing organizational structures not as determined by [objective] laws

but as a result of decisions in past choice[s] … whether intentional or implicit’ (p. 611).

4. ‘By confronting theories of organizational change with historical development, these theories

can be subjected to a more radical test than they have to pass when merely being confronted

with data on short-run changes’ (p. 612).

Each of these points relies in large part on the availability of archives or accounts based on archival research.

British Airways, for example, has been in operation, in one form or another, since 1919.5 While it is possible

to conduct interviews with current and former employees of the airline, this approach would be limited to the

number of people you could interview in a certain time span; the availability of people prepared to talk to you;

the span of time that their experience would cover (most of those who worked for the airline before World War

II would now be dead); and the memories of those interviewed. At the very least you would need to access

company documents and other artifacts to verify and expand on what interviewees tell you. Existing published

histories (e.g. Penrose, 1980) could also help to provide other insights into the company. However, the various

documents to be found in an archive, including associated airline histories, were written for a specific purpose

that may not address or reveal other purposes. For example, feminist studies of the airline industry (Barry,

2007; Yano, 2011) are more likely than not to be confronted by archival materials (and histories) that largely

focus on men and machines.

Modernist accounts of management and organizational history include Urwick (1938), George (1968), Kieser

(1994), Wren (2005), and Bowden and Lamond (2015).

Postmodernist

Postmodernists see value in archives for various reasons other than proof of any particular truth. Their interest

is in the role that archives, as ‘complex systems of rules', play in the construction of ‘knowledge'. There are

at least two levels to this. The first one involves analysis of the materials themselves to reveal how corporate

thinking and practices helped to socially construct particular discourses. For example, in our study of British

Airways, we examined the airline's hiring and imaging of women to gain a sense of how discriminatory

practices develop, are maintained and change over time (Mills, 2006). To do this we used the framework of

the juncture (or ‘a concurrence of events in time in which a series of images, impressions, and experiences

come together, giving the appearance of a coherent whole that influences how an organization is understood’

Mills, 2010, p. 509). This helped us to identity changing dominant corporate attitudes to the role of women

over time and factors associated with the development, maintenance and change in selected practices.6 The

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second level is to examine how the archive itself serves to shape our understanding of the past. In a plea for ‘a

fuller reflection of the uses and limitations of the archive in business historical research', Schwarzkopf (2012,

p. 1) cites Foucault's contention that ‘archives are not just sites for the passive collection of records from

the past. Rather, archives are very active in both enabling and limiting what we see, know, understand, and

accept as real’ (p. 9). To return to our study of British Airways, we found that much of what was collected and

saved focused primarily on activities associated with men, such as piloting, engineering, and management

at all levels. We note that the association between men and particular activities not only reflected dominant

practices in the airline but also served to reinforce those associations. As our research went on to argue,

a powerful discourse of gender relations played an important role in the development of British Airways,

determining who was hired and to what position; who was privileged and who was marginalized in the stories

told (e.g. detailed accounts of male airline pilots and managers) and the stories not told (e.g. the role of female

pilots during World War II). For a considerable period of time, a large number of corporate stories about

female employees centered on sexuality and the female flight attendant as the leading, albeit marginalized,

image of women in the airline industry (Helms Mills & Mills, 2008; Mills, 2006). Similarly, a discourse of

colonialism is evident for much of British Airways’ first forty or more years of operation. Here the archive

neglects the impact of the airline on non-white members of the British Empire, both in terms of the airline's

restricted hiring practices of non-white Africans and their imaging as irrational, menial labour, and basically

savage (Mills, 1995).

Postmodernist accounts of management and organizational history include Jacques (1996), Rowlinson

(2004), and McKinlay (2013).

Amodernist

Amodernist social scientists have come lately to archival research7 and are particularly interested in how

histories are produced as an outcome of a series of actor-networked relations. Here the archive is of interest

as a punctuated actor, i.e. something that is spoken of as if it is a single, albeit powerful, entity that offers

a potential treasure trove of facts about a particular person, company, event, or period. Here the focus is

not so much on developing histories out of available archival materials but rather analysis of how specific

histories come to be developed. Myrick et al. (2013), for example, analyzed archival materials of the Academy

of Management (AoM). The analysis was not to develop a new history of that association but rather to make

sense of how the existing history of the association (see http://aom.org/About-AOM/History.aspx; Wrege,

1986) came into being, and what the implications are. We were particularly interested to see what coherence

of actors worked together to create the idea of an association that has been continuously in operation since

1936. While this point of longevity lent credence to the authority and legitimacy of the AoM, it papered over

contrary details, such as the fact that the supposedly first two meetings (1936, 1937) were dinner meetings

not conferences; that the name Academy of Management was retrospectively applied to the association at a

later date; and that between 1941 and 1947 the association was basically defunct. Yet the 2011 conference

was heralded as the 75th year of the AoM – dating the association back to 1936, while the 2015 conference

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was deemed the 75th conference – contradictorily dating the conferences back to 1941.

Amodernist accounts of management and organizational history include Bruce (2006), Bruce and Nyland

(2011), Coller et al. (2015), Hartt et al. (2014), Myrick et al. (2013), and Shenhav and Weitz (2000).

• Archival research is useful for understanding relationships between the past and history in

understanding management and organizations over time. Those insights can be in the form of

establishing factual details of what really happened and their impact on current organizational reality

(modernist); revealing powerful discourses and their influence on extant knowledge (postmodernist);

and gaining insights into how history is produced as knowledge (amodernist).

Thoroughly Modern Mission

In this and the next section we will explore the methods and challenges faced by, respectively, modernists

and then postmodernists and amodernists.

It would be doing a gross injustice to modernist researchers to suggest that they are unaware of the multitude

of problems surrounding the gathering and analysis of archival material. Indeed, much of the discussion of

archival research from a modernist perspective involves questions about focus, access, and the evaluation;

collection and storage; evidentiary value and triangulation. Let's look at each in turn.

Focus

You may want to study some aspect of the history of a particular person, organization, phenomenon, etc. A

couple of good places to start are lists of archival sources and histories of your chosen topic.

Archival source lists:

There are numerous online sources to available archives and their accessibility these days. A search by

archives and then within the archive may provide useful clues to what you are looking for. For example, when,

in an earlier modernist phase, we were interested in studying how organizational cultures develop, maintain,

and change discriminatory practices over time, we looked around for a business that (a) had an existing and

well-developed archive – to allow us to track different cultural artifacts; (b) had been in existence for at least

50 years – to allow us to study changes over relatively long time periods; (c) was internationally well-known

– to provide us with an example that was of interest to a large number of potential readers/ researchers, as

well as being socio-economically powerful to have an influence on social thinking; (d) where possible, had

a powerful socio-cultural association with gendered practices; and (e) had a number of published histories

on the company. A search through a guide to British archives (Foster & Sheppard, 1989) led us to British

Airways, which proved to be a treasure trove of documentation, artifact collections, documentary films, and

photographs. The Archives and Museum collection included in-house newsletters8 (useful for tracking people

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and events over time), annual reports9 (providing clues to leading members of the airline and their strategic

thinking), corporate memoranda10 (interesting for insights into factors that were of particular interest to the

company), advertisements11 (showing how the company imaged itself and its employees), and corporate

films and a vast photographic library12 (for gaining insights into who is privileged and who is marginalized by

corporate leaders and editors).

Histories:

The existence of published histories can help the researcher to gain insights into the chosen organization,

people, and or/phenomena but can also provide extensive information into the available sources of

information to be found. Our research into histories of Pan American Airways not only led us to the Pan

American World Airways Collection at the University of Miami but also to the Smithsonian National Air and

Space Museum as well as the British Airways Archives and Museum, which contain a number of documents

on relationships between Pan Am and British Airways. We would note that while this collection of ‘information’

is similar to a modernist approach, the ultimate difference lies in what material is being collected (e.g.

evidence of dominant discourses versus fact) and how it is analyzed. Our framework at the time drew on

postmodernism.

These sources will not only help you to decide what it is possible to focus on but in all likelihood, they will

shape the direction you go in. Esterberg (2002, p.130) suggests that such histories and debates around the

subject can help you ‘to conceptualize your study and figure out what the main controversies are'. On the

other hand, existing histories may appear to limit what you can study. British Airways histories, for example,

say little or nothing on gender and colonial relations. That may be an indication of what is potentially missing

from the archives and/or the time needed to be spent searching the archives. This will shape the focus on

your study and the types of documents you will need to spend more time on. In our study of British Airways,

we had to spend a considerable time looking for accounts of female members of staff and the role they played

in the airline. The problem is exacerbated where there are no available archival sources or they are spread

out across a number of places.

• Consult specific companies and organizational members, archival source lists, and existing histories

to assess your ability to study the topic in hand.

• Begin your archival research by reading ‘what other historians and social scientists have said about

the topic’ (Esterberg, 2002, p. 130).

Access

These sources are only the beginning of the process. Access is a crucial issue. You may know where to

look, but you need to check what is accessible and what isn't. Not all archives are open to the public, and

where they are, some of the materials may not be accessible (Berg, 1989; Lipartito, 2014). An example of

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the former is where we attempted to gain access to the archives of United Airlines (UA). Our study of Air

Canada indicated that UA had played a role in training Air Canada's flight attendants in 1937. In our request

to visit the UA archives, we were referred to the online part of the archive, which contained very limited

(and carefully crafted) material, and to a recent corporate history (Garvey & Fisher, 2002), which gave no

clues to the material we were seeking. An example of the latter problem is detailed by Rostis (2015) who

was attempting to study the role of the Biafran War (1967–70) in the development and role of humanitarian

agencies in Africa, only to find that the International Red Cross restricted access to those files. Rostis resorted

to newspaper reports of the time, but we have been unable as yet to gain information on the early role of UA

in the development of Air Canada.

• Check access to selected archives and the availability of related histories in advance of developing

a specific focus.

Collection and Storage

Having found your way to an archive, there are a number of considerations to take into account that affect

what you find and how you make sense of it. Berg (1989) distinguishes between those archives (usually

public) where the documents have been developed for ‘the express purpose of the examination of others’

(p. 86) and those (private) archives that were not developed for public engagement. While the latter may

take on a range of peculiar forms according to the needs of the person(s) establishing them, the former have

usually been ordered in a particular way to assist researchers to find certain materials. This may be quite

systematic as in the case of the National Archives of Canada or they may be placed in a rough order such

as the Pan American collection, where materials are boxed together in broad categories (e.g. ‘interviews and

biographies', ‘China', etc.). Either way, what is collected and how it is ordered can greatly affect the material

that you manage to find and what sense you make of it. Webb et al. (1984) contend that there are at least ‘two

major sources of bias in archival records – how they are collected and how they survive’ (p. 114). According

to Stan (2010, p. 29) researchers need to ‘be aware that not all archives were systematically collected [and

may not] include many relevant documents, either because these documents were destroyed intentionally or

accidentally or because they were scattered among other archives collections'. The Pan Am collection, for

example, for many years consisted of just over 600 boxes of material, but this changed dramatically on, what

was to be, our last day of research at the collection when another 900 boxes were added to the collection. The

additional boxes, we were informed, were culled from tens of thousands of boxes discovered in a warehouse

in New York.13 Addressing the issue of what does and does not get collected, Schwarzkopf (2012) argues

that ‘archives reinforce survivorship bias [with large] and dominant companies often [having] better archives’

than smaller companies (p. 7). He also goes on to argue that there is a European bias in the establishment

of archives ‘because it is only within the global north and the west that this institutional support is so widely

available that local and national authorities and firms themselves can afford to preserve company records’

(p. 5). In summary, Schwarzkopf (2012) argues that ‘archives are not just sites for the passive collection

of records from the past. Rather, archives are very active in both enabling and limiting what we see, know,

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understand, and accept as real’ (p. 9). He goes on not only to warn researchers about the in-built biases of

archives but also for ‘an open theoretical debate about the epistemological status of the archive in business

history’ (p. 2).

• Researchers need to be aware of the influence of archives through the establishment, selection, and

ordering processes involved.

• A process of reflection of the influence of the archive should be encouraged.

Evaluation

Scott (1990) argues that four criteria should be used to evaluate documents – authenticity, credibility,

representativeness, and meaning (cited in Myers, 2009, p. 159).

Authenticity refers to whether the document is what it claims to be. The most high profile example is a

document called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, published in the early part of the twentieth century,

which was claimed to be a Jewish plan for world domination. The document was eventually proven to be a

forgery but not before carmaker Henry Ford published half a million copies in 1920 in an attempt to spread

anti-Semitism.

Credibility refers to the extent to which the author of a document is believable in what they are claiming.

For example, in 1950, United States Senator Joseph McCarthy constantly referred to documents in his

possession that proved that there were over 200 known communists working in the State Department. He was

later to claim that there were communists in the U.S. military. None of these claims was ever authenticated

and McCarthy became known in some quarters as self-serving and prone to exaggeration (Caute, 1979).

Representativeness refers to the extent to which any single document can be taken as evidence of a

particular phenomenon. For example, in our research in the Academy of Management archives we found a

letter to Keith Davis (AoM President, 1964) from Max Schmoor, in which he, Schmoor, states that ‘I too hope

that Goldwater or someone similar in philosophy does get to be VP or pres. Next time around’ (Schmoor,

1961). Given the usually liberal character of Davis and his importance in the field of business studies at the

time, we searched for other documentation to corroborate his support for right-wing Senator Barry Goldwater

and other right-wing causes. Finding none, we did not pursue the matter further.

Meaning, in this case, refers to the extent to which a document can be clearly understood. For example,

some of the phrasing may not be clear. In the letter from Schmoor to Davis, discussed above, for example,

it is possible that Schmoor is not referring to Davis’ political preferences but rather responding to an earlier

comment by Davis that distances him from Goldwater supporters. Context can also be critical in making

sense of what was meant by a person at a given time. For example, if you were trying to evaluate the 1944

Hollywood movie Song of Russia, you would need to take into account the time and context of the film

when the Soviet Union was seen by many as the heroic ally of the United States. Viewed in the context

of McCarthyism in the 1950s, it was seen by many as an attempt by communists to infiltrate the cultural

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understandings and values of Americans (Caute, 1979). Similarly, research activities and stances taken

by some university professors were viewed as progressive in the 1930s and 1940s, but then viewed as

treasonous in the 1950s (Schrecker, 1986). Abraham Maslow, for one, came under suspicion by the Federal

Bureau of Investigation (Cooke & Mills, 2008). Esterberg (2002) adds that in the evaluation of sources we also

need to take into account the biases and predilections of the author as well as his or her overall viewpoint,

the kinds of evidence they use, and the extent to which they are credible.

• To evaluate archival documents, look for:

• Authenticity

• Credibility

• Representativeness

• Meaning

Evidentiary Value

George and Bennett (2005) raise questions about how to judge the worth or evidentiary value of documents.

They argue that ‘scholars are not immune from the general tendency to attach particular significance to an

item that supports their pre-existing or favored interpretation and, conversely, to downplay the significance of

an item that challenges it’ (p. 99). Thus, they advise, we need to be ‘prepared to revise existing interpretations

when new evidence and compelling new interpretations emerge’ (ibid.). In order to do this, they continue,

archival documents need to be regarded ‘as a type of purposeful communication’ and as such analyzed for

what is being communicated, and ‘who is speaking to whom, for what purpose and under what circumstances’

(pp. 99–100, original emphasis). For example, when Pan Am's corporate leadership attempted to hire a

professional historian to write a history of the company, they were turned down by a number of respected

scholars who baulked at the idea of a history geared to lionizing the role of Juan Trippe, the airline's chief

executive. Eventually they turned to crime fiction writer Robert Daley who was willing to write a corporate

history. Thus, when reading Daley's history of Pan Am – American Saga. Juan Trippe and His Pan Am

Empire (Daley, 1980) – we need to take into account the various influences on the author, the author's ability/

training to write a history; his (financial) reasons for writing the book and the circumstances surrounding his

appointment (Durepos et al., 2008). This may not mean that it is a flawed history, but it does raise questions

about how it was developed. For instance, when reading the subsequent book, we need to take into account

that after approaching a number of historians to write a corporate history of Pan American Airways the airline's

leadership settled on detective fiction writer Robert Daley.

• Judge the evidentiary value of documents based on an analysis of who wrote it, for whom, under

what circumstances, and in the context of its production.

Triangulation

Triangulation refers to the research strategy of ensuring that you don't rely on just one source of data. It is

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used in journalism all the time to ensure that the authenticity of a story does not rely on a single source.

According to Berg (1989, pp. 97–8) it is ‘particularly important to use multiple procedures (triangulation) when

working with archival data to reduce possible sources of error (missing data and so on)'. We came across

this problem recently when we were trying to understand the influence of the British Airways’ (BA) archives

on extant histories of the company. We began by asking the BA archive staff, consisting largely of retired

employee volunteers, when the archive was established. The various responses we got indicated that there

were several conflicting answers and most did not know the answer. We then returned to the archive at a later

date and searched through in-house newsletters for some kind of definitive answer. Again, there was some

confusion so, in an iterative process, we used the written information to review with the volunteers what made

more sense to them (Coller et al., 2015).

• Use multiple procedures (triangulation) when working with archival data to reduce possible sources

of error.

Postmoderns and Amoderns in the Archive

To contrast the modernist with postmodern and amodern approaches, we will revisit some of the issues raised

above.

Postmodernism

Earlier we defined postmodernism as ‘a critique of modernist representation, specifically the idea that

concepts mirror reality, arguing that representations provide at best partial perspectives on their objects …

and the cognition proceeds through representation that is mediated by language and historicity’ (Linstead,

2010, p. 694). In terms of specifically archival research, this means that the postmodernist occupies an

apparently paradoxical role that is linked through a critique of language use. On the one hand, the

postmodernist seeks to understand the character, location, and context of powerful discourses. Foucault, for

example, looked for traces of constructs such as madness, discipline, or sexuality in multiple places (Rostis,

2015). On the other hand, postmodernists are harsh critics of (realist understandings of) the archive. White

(2004, p. 198), for example, characterizes the modernist approach to the archive as a voyage of discovery

whereby, through the uncovering of a series of facts, sources, or traces a history emerges (or at least that is

the hope). He then asks us, from a postmodernist perspective, to imagine a completed history: ‘Here you will

find in it things that are in no conceivable archive: a story, an emplotment, a narrative structure, tropological

figurings, foregrounding or backgrounding arguments, and the positional and positional thesis’ (ibid.). In other

words, what the modernist has deigned to discover is in fact a self-imposed story on a group of disparate

words read as facts. In the end, the postmodernist adopts a relativist approach to the archive, arguing that

there are numerous possibilities for reading into the ‘traces', including explorations and exampling of powerful

discourses.

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From this perspective written histories are viewed not as more-or-less factual accounts but as archives, that

contribute to discursive views of the world. The histories of BA, for example, arguably contribute to a gendered

discourse of inequality. The collection and storage of archival materials are examined for the way they order

knowledge, i.e. influence discursive understanding of the materials contained therein. The chronological

arrangement of BA's museum artifacts, for example, serves to construct a narrative of technological and

ownership progression that privileges private over public ownership and marginalizes the role of women in

the company.14 Authenticity of a document matters less than its potential impact. In the case of Henry Ford's

reproduction and distribution of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, its impact on anti-Semitism is likely of

more importance than whether it was a forgery or not. Its forged character is more likely to raise questions

about how discourses are shaped than whether the document can be trusted as authentic. Similarly, the

postmodernist may be less interested in whether the author of a document can be trusted in their account

as much as whether their account is influential regardless. Senator McCarthy's lists of communists may have

been bogus, but the very nature of his claims and the way in which he presented them made his name into

a socio-political phenomenon viz. McCarthyism. Representativeness and triangulation may be the two areas

where the postmodernist and modernism come closest as both are usually looking for phenomena that can

be claimed to have some socio-political impact at some level or other. And both are looking for other sources

to help them develop plausible accounts of a particular phenomenon. Nonetheless, the meanings imbued in

each term do differ considerably between the two approaches. Which bring us to the issue of a document's

meaning. While the modernist is trying to get to the truth of what someone says through cognitive means, the

postmodernist seeks to gain insights on how meanings are produced (rather than influenced) by the context

in which they appear and in the context in which they are being read. Finally, in terms of evidentiary evidence,

modernists, such as George and Bennett (see earlier) stress cognitive processes of addressing bias, as if the

world of ideas and practices were rooted in discernible facts. The postmodernist, on the other hand, would be

more interested in how interpretations were rooted in discursive notions of reality.

Amodernism

Amodernism is a conceptual stance that shares much of postmodernism's critique of modernism. However,

although it ‘shifts our focus away from the modernist necessity for accurate representations of reality

(realism)', it also shifts focus away from ‘the relativist nature of a reality mediated through knowledge and

text (the anti-realism of the textual turn)', focusing instead on ‘practices’ (Durepos, 2015, p. 169). This means

‘tracing the many shapes that human–non-human associations make when engaged in activity’ (ibid.). Thus,

if history-making ‘is an everyday practice … why not study the various compositions it takes in its situated

practices?’ (ibid.). In simple terms, amodernism seeks to understand how histories are produced rather than

made. The latter, modernist idea, suggests that histories (more-or-less accurately) describe the activities of

real people and events over time. The former, amodernist idea, suggests that ideas about people and events

are shaped through a series of relationships between people and things. Those relationships can include

historians, history books, conferences, but also a series of activities involving a variety of people. Thus, unlike

modernists, history is not made, it is socially constructed; and unlike postmodernists, history is not simply

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mediated by historians, but rather by a host of human and non-human actors of whom the historian may be

one. This approach simultaneously dismantles the idea of history as a real and truthful account of the past

while recognizing its value as an outcome of human–non-human relationships. We don't have to believe in

Santa Claus to recognize the value of the phenomenon.

How does this play out in the archives? Essentially the idea is to attempt to reassemble any given history to

see how it is produced. This entails trying to gather insights into what, how, and when something (some sense

of history) was produced. To that end, amodernists try to follow the actors involved to see how something was

produced and came to be an accepted account.

From this perspective, written histories are an interesting starting point in their own right but also in providing

clues to some of the potential actors and events to be followed through archival documents. Robert Daley's

(1980) history of Pan Am, for example, masks the various relationships that went into its making (Durepos

et al., 2008). On the surface, it is a series of historical facts brought together by the author as historian.

Through that process, the book performs as a history because we have no reason to question the voracity

of the details. On further examination, through archival research, the making of the book involved a series of

senior managers who set out to commission a particular history of the airline, based on a series of selectively

collected artifacts and documents, and a desire to avoid a more critical history that was published four

decades earlier. For the amodernist, the collection, storage, and ordering of the archive are important actors

in influencing what gets to count as history. What you cannot find in an archive is just as important as what

you can find and perhaps more so. Authenticity is more interesting as a process whereby an actor becomes

involved in a process and is enrolled (i.e. accepts the truth or sense of something). A forged document is no

less an actor than an authentic document. Both can influence the production of a history. Representativeness

is less important in amodernist research or at least it takes on a different meaning. The issue is not whether

a single account is reproduced elsewhere, so much as the influence that the related actor plays in the

production of an account. Thus, while the modernist is looking for corroborating evidence, the amodernist

is looking at how/whether the actor appears to have influenced some level of relational activity. In regard to

meaning, the amodernist tries to assess not what the author means so much as how is a particular meaning

produced and what type of activity helped to produce a given meaning. The same is the case with credibility.

For the modernist, it is a question of the value of a document if the author is not deemed credible. For the

amodernist, the question would be whether or how something becomes accepted as credible. Just what is

it that Senator McCarthy did to get some of his flawed ideas across? For the amodernist, evidentiary value

does not reside in an appraisal of the words and expressions of an author so much as understanding how it

works as a matter of influence on other actors. Finally, for amodernists, triangulation, although it has different

meanings from those intended by modernists, involves looking for different sources to assess the influence of

selected actors on particular outcomes (i.e. historical accounts).

Endpoint: The Silence of the Archives

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In this entry, we have tried to show the value of archival research and the varying ways that different research

traditions approach it. We have tried to indicate, through various examples, some of the gendered and

racialized issues involved in the construction and ordering of archives – its European bias as Schwarzkopf

(2012) terms it. But it is more than that. The problem facing all three approaches discussed is fundamentally

the issue of collection and storage. As a number of feminists (J. W. Scott, 1987) and postcolonialists (Ibarra-

Colado, 2006) have pointed out, archives are often silent on the role of women and formerly colonized people.

To that end, we conclude with a paradoxical plea for more archival studies that address what Decker (2013)

calls ‘the silence of the archives’ and a reappraisal of the Western bias inherent in the value placed on

archives.

Notes

1. At times, we move between postmodernist and amodernist accounts as we explore not only the impact of

powerful discourses on people (postmodernist) but also on the network of relations (amodernist) associated

with the production of a particular discourse.

2. There are debates within the literature around the difference between postmodernism and

poststructuralism, with some authors viewing postmodernism as an umbrella term that also includes

poststructuralism and others distinguishing between them based on methodological approach (see P. Prasad,

2005). For the purpose of this chapter we use the umbrella term, drawing on Linstead (2010, p. 694) who

defines postmodernism as ‘critique of modernist representation, specifically the idea that concepts mirror

reality, arguing that representations provide at best partial perspectives on their objects … and the cognition

proceeds through representation that is mediated by language and historicity'.

3. Hartt (2013) refers to non-corporeal actants as phenomena that are non-physical in nature (e.g. stories,

values, traditions, memories, and even histories) but yet can influence human actors.

4. The Air Canada archives are housed at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum in Ottawa.

5. The date of British Airways’ establishment is not without contestation (see Coller et al., 2015).

6. For example, between 1919–24 the airline hired less than a handful of women, and this reflected a

dominant mindset about the role of women. However, between 1924–39 women constituted 10 percent of the

airline's employees and reflected a changing mindset about women's role.

7. Although actor–network theorists have been undertaking amodernist research since the late 1970s, the

great majority of this has revolved around ethnographic research of on-going activities – see, for example,

Latour and Woolgar (1979).

8. See special issue 7, 3–4, 2008 of Management & Organizational History on company magazines and in-

house newsletters.

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9. For interesting work on annual reports, see Benschop and Meihuizen (2002), Tinker and Neimark (1987),

and Burrell (1987).

10. An interesting account of the use of corporate memoranda can be found in A. Prasad and Mir (2002).

11. For work on ‘reading’ and analyzing advertisements, see Alvesson (1998).

12. For work on photographic and film analysis see Warren (2002) and Bezner (1999).

13. On the problems of archival storage and the challenge of information/knowledge, see Burke (2012).

14. A relatively large collection of female mannequins in flight attendant uniforms suggests that this was

women's major role in the airline.

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