Family Archive as a Narrative
Organization
Pekka Uotila
Raija ja Erkki Uotilan arkisto
http://www.darchive.fi/uotila
Blogi
http://raijajaerkkiuotila.blogspot.fi/
Personal Digital Archiving 2014
Indianapolis 20.-21.4.2014
Mikkelin ammattikorkeakoulu / www.mamk.fi
My favorite
family photo
Organizing is storytelling and
organizational
storytelling becomes
visible in documents.
Mikkelin ammattikorkeakoulu / www.mamk.fi
Organization as a communicative
construction: my favorite readings
Boje, D. M.; Rosile, A. (2003) Life Imitates
Art: Enron’s Epic and Tragic Narration.
Cooren, F. (2000) The Organizing Property of
Communication.
Fisher, R.W. (2009) Human Communication
As Narration. Toward a Philosophy of
Reason, Value, and Action.
Taylor, J. R. & van Every, E. J. (2000). The
Emergent Organization. Communication as
Its Site and Surface.
Weick, K. E. (1995). Sensemaking in
organizations.
Kim, S. (2013). Personal Digital
Archives: Preservation of Documents,
Preservation of Self.
Anderson S.R.& Allen R.B. (2009).
Envisioning the Archival Commons.
Nesmith, Tom (2002). Seeing
Archives: Postmodernism and the
Changing Intellectual Place of
Archives.
Mikkelin ammattikorkeakoulu / www.mamk.fi
Tragic vs. epic interpretations of
organizations
Actions
Effort
Effort
Actions
Planning
Implementation
Evaluation
Time
Time
Tragic interpretation: This is how an ideal
Epic interpretation: This is how people
(project) organization should function (a
clear plot and well defined roles of the
actors)
experience the (project) organization
function (fuzzy plot and fuzzy defined roles
of the actors)
Mikkelin ammattikorkeakoulu / www.mamk.fi
Methods and data
Recorded interviews, field work and
documented experiments with the
material in a digital archive service
Mikkelin ammattikorkeakoulu / www.mamk.fi
On Human Remains: Values and Practice in
the Home Archiving of Cherished Objects
DAVID S. KIRK and ABIGAIL SELLEN
ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction,
Vol. 17, No. 3, Article 10, Publication date: July 2010.
Mikkelin ammattikorkeakoulu / www.mamk.fi
Conversation, photographs
and identity
The user interface of the digital
archiving service is a tragic narrative
that the user of the service is
supposed to follow
Recorded interviews
Mikkelin ammattikorkeakoulu / www.mamk.fi
Conversation, photographs
and identity
Technical workflow
”The archiving process”
Social workflow
”The archiving experience”
1. Photograph
2. Uploading
3. Standard metadata
1. Photograph
2. Conversation
3. Many interpretations
Tragic narrative:
one photo, one story
Epic narrative:
one photo, many stories
ARCHIVING PRACTICE
FAMILY IDENTITY
Mikkelin ammattikorkeakoulu / www.mamk.fi
Kuusamo
Provenance as a
tragic narration
Puolanka
Photoalbum order
Spatial order
Archival order
Mikkelin ammattikorkeakoulu / www.mamk.fi
Provenance as a tragic narration
Constructing the digital family archive as an emerging epic narrative.
Where is this house?
Tragic narrative 1.
“there is only one way to make photo albums”
= Kuusamo
Tragic narrative 2.
“the German army burned everything at the
end of the war in Kuusamo”
= Puolanka
Tragic narrative 3.
“there are not that kind of houses in Puolanka”
= Kuusamo
Mikkelin ammattikorkeakoulu / www.mamk.fi
Archive as a polyphonic
narrative
Her story:
His story:
She and the
milk can
He and the Pope
My story:
My story
The recycling
storyteller
Mikkelin ammattikorkeakoulu / www.mamk.fi
Conclusion
“Family archiving as a narrative
organization” approach:
•
•
•
foregrounds the communicative and
the narrative feature of the archived
objects, the archiving practices and
the actual construction of a family
archive
emphasizes the emergent nature of
archiving
illustrates how the emergency can be
traced in the interplay of several
simultaneous tragic narratives
The family archive and the archiving process is
a never ending epic story.
• reveals the conflicting interests
and contradictory objectives of
different actors
• is very likely to pay attention to
conflicts, different roles,
continuities, discontinuities and
power
• makes sense if the connections
between small familiar objects are
interpreted as part of generally
known historical events.
Mikkelin ammattikorkeakoulu / www.mamk.fi
Mikkelin ammattikorkeakoulu / www.mamk.fi