Is it a question of trust or why are we afraid to go to Nineveh?

Archival Informatics Newsletter - Tập 11 - Trang 409-425 - 2011
Michael S. Moss1
1School of Humanities, Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute, University of Glasgow, George Service House, Glasgow, UK

Tóm tắt

Trust is an overused concept in our contemporary world. This paper explores the complex relationship of trust, efficiency, accountability, transparency and responsibility and their relationship to recordkeeping in our globalizing culture. It focuses on the profound changes that have taken place in the meaning and practice of audit within neo-liberal societies and how the ‘rituals of verification’ and the ‘managerialism’ may pervert the resulting record. It challenges the unthinking use of much of the rhetoric surrounding these concepts by archivists to justify their existence. It reflects on why the archival voice often remains silent or at best goes unheard in much of the discussion about these questions that have profound consequences for democratic societies. It is easy to lay the blame at the door of a perceived breakdown of trust rather than to consider whether the root of the problem lies with archivists and records managers themselves. This paper draws on my experience in directing the Information Management and Preservation MSC programme at the University of Glasgow and wide and serendipitous reading, which has sometimes been brought to my notice by students.

Tài liệu tham khảo

Atiyah PS (1979) The rise and fall of freedom of contract. Clarendon Press, Oxford Barber M (2007) Instruction to deliver: Tony Blair, the Public Services and the challenge of delivery. Politico’s Publishing, London Bingham T (2010) The rule of law. Allen Lane, London Blackburn TR (2008) The extermination of a British army: the retreat from Cabul. APH Publishing, New Delhi Blair T (2010) Tony Blair—a journey. Hutchison, London Briggs A, Burke P (2002) A social history of the media: from Gutenberg to the internet. Polity Press, Cambridge Butler R (2004) Review of intelligence on weapons of mass destruction—report of a committee of privy counsellors. HC898. Stationery Office, London Cameron D (2010) Letter to Government departments on opening up data. http://www.number10.gov.uk/news/statements-and-articles/2010/05/letter-to-government-departments-on-opening-up-data-51204. Accessed July 2010 Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) (2010) http://www.caat.org.uk/issues/saudi-tna/. Accessed July 2010 Chandrasekaran R (2006) Imperial life in the Emerald City: inside Iraq’s green zone. Alfred A Knopf, New York Chilcot J et al (2010) Iraq inquiry. http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/. Accessed July 2010 Clarke K et al (eds) (2006) Trust in technology: a socio-technical perspective. Springer Dordrecht, New York Corfield PJ (2007) Time and the shape of history. Yale University Press, New Haven Cox RJ (2006) Ethics, accountability and recordkeeping in a dangerous world. Facet Publishing, London Cox RJ, Wallace DA (2002) Archives and the public good: accountability and records in modern society. Quorum Books, Westport Currall J, Moss M, Stuart S (2008) Authenticity: a red herring? J Appl Logic 6(4):534–544 Dangerfield G (1936) The strange death of liberal England. Constable & Co., London Dicks I (2007) Towards an understanding of the Muslim Amachinga Yao worldview based on Yao Oral Literature. PhD in theology thesis, Chancellor College, University of Malawi, 2007 Dikötter F (2010) Mao’s great famine. Bloomsbury, London Dingwall G (2010) Helping the Horde to our Hoard: the relevance of public archives in the open data movement. Paper presented at: Questions of trust? Archives, records and identities, FARMER/NAET Conference, 5–6 July 2010 du Gay P (2005) The values of bureaucracy. Oxford University Press, Oxford Eaves D (2009) The three laws of open government data. http://www.eaves.ca/2009/09/30/three-law-of-open-government-data/. Accessed July 2010 Flichy P (2007) Les enjeux démocratiques et administratifs d’Internet—the internet: democratic and administrative challenges. Regards sur l’actualité, no. 327 Flinn A, Jones H (eds) (2009) Freedom of information open access and empty archives. Routledge, London Foster C (2005) British government in crisis, or the third English revolution. Hart Publishing, Oxford Fukuyama F (1995) Trust: the social virtues and the creation of prosperity. Hamish Hamilton, London Giddens A (1984) The constitution of society. Outline of the theory of structuration. Polity Press, Cambridge Giddens A (1987) A social theory and modern sociology. Polity Press, Cambridge Giddens A (1990) The consequences of modernity. Polity Press, Cambridge Gilliland A (2010) Trust, neutrality and the obligation of archival education in a global digital society. Paper presented at: Questions of trust? Archives, records and identities, FARMER/NAET Conference, 5– 6 July 2010 Goldsmith (2003) Attorney General’s opinion: The Iraq inquiry. http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/transcripts/declassified-documents.aspx. Accessed July 2010 Gough R (2007) An end to Sofa government: better working of prime minister and cabinet. Conservative Democracy Task Force, London Herrada J (2010) A review of “archives power: memory, accountability, and social justice”. J Arch Organ 8(1):84–85 Holbrooke R (2001) Get the message out. Washington post, 28 October 2001, B07 Hosking G (2008) The ‘credit crunch’ and the importance of trust. Hist Policy Lond. http://www.historyandpolicy.org/papers/policy-paper-77.html. Accessed July 2010 Information matters: building government’s capability in managing knowledge and information (2008) HM Government http://www.gkimn.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/information-matters-strategy.pdf. Accessed July 2010 Jenkinson H (1924) Medieval Tallies, public and private. Archaeologia 74(1925):289–351 Jenkinson H (1948) The English archivist: a new profession being an inaugural lecture for a new course in archive administration delivered at University College London. H. K. Lewis & Co., London Jimerson RC (2009) Archives power: memory, accountability, and social justice. The Society of American Archivists, Chicago Kassow SD (2008) Who will write our history?: Emanuel Ringelblum, the Warsaw Ghetto, and the Oyneg Shabes archive. Indiana University Press, Bloomington Krishnamurthy R (1997) Sangam age tamil coins. Garnet Publications, Madras Lappin J (2010) What will be the next records management orthodoxy? Records Manag J 20(3):252–264 Löfstedt RE (2009) Risk management in post-trust societies. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke Mackenzie D (2009a) Beneath all the toxic acronyms lies a basic cultural issue. Financial Times 26 November 2009 Mackenzie D (2009b) The credit crisis as a problem in the sociology of knowledge. http://www.sps.ed.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/36082/CrisisNew19.pdf. Accessed July 2010 MacNeil H (2010) Trust and professional identity: narratives, counter-narratives and lingering ambiguities. Paper presented at: Questions of trust? Archives, records and identities, FARMER/NAET Conference, 5–6 July 2010 Matthews D (2008) A history of auditing—the changing audit process in Britain from the nineteenth century to the present day. Routledge, London Maxwell RC (2004) Trust in Agency. J Econ Manag Strategy 13:375–404 Mills M (2009) The maintenance of Headway. Bloomsbury Publishing, London Mitchell JC (1956) The Yao Village: a study in the social structure of a Malawian tribe. Manchester University Press, Manchester Morgan K, Sonnino R (2010) The urban foodscape: world cities and the new food equation. Camb J Reg Econ Soc 3:209–224 Moss M (2005) The Hutton inquiry, the president of Nigeria and what the Butler hoped to see? Engl Hist Rev CXX 487:577–592 Moss M (2007) Archivist friend or foe. In: Aubry M, Chave I, Doom V (eds) Archives, archivistes, dans L’Europe du Nord-Ouest de l’Antiquité à Nos Jours. IHRS, Lille, pp 243–253 Napier C (2009) ‘Defining Islamic accounting: current issues, past roots’. Account Hist 14(1–2):121–144 O’Neill O (2002) A question of trust. BBC—Reith lectures. http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2002/. Accessed July 2010 O’Neill O (2010) Keynote address finance in question/finance in crisis conference. ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change, University of Manchester Östberg K, Eriksson F (2009) The problematic freedom of information principle; the Swedish experience. In: Flinn A, Jones H (eds) (2009) Freedom of information open access and empty archives. Routledge, London, pp 113–124 Pacioli L (1509) De divina proportione. Paganinus de Paganinus, Venice Power M (1997) The audit society: rituals of verification. Oxford University Press, Oxford Power M (2004) The risk management of everything–rethinking the politics of uncertainty. Demos, London Power M (2007) Organized uncertainty—designing a world of risk management. Oxford University Press, Oxford Roper M (2003) Archives and the public good: accountability and records in modern society. J Documentation 59(5):617–619 Saramago J (2002) The cave, Trans Margaret Jull Costa. Harvill Press, London Saville M et al (2010) Report of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry. http://www.bloody-sunday-inquiry.org/. Accessed July 2010 Sebald WG (2001) Austerlitz. Hamish Hamilton, London Selden A (2009) Trust: how we lost it and how to get it back. Biteback Publishing, London Strathern M (2000) Virtual society? Get real! abstraction and decontextualisation: an anthropological comment or: e for ethnography. http://www.virtualsociety.sbs.ox.ac.uk/GRpapers/strathern.htm. Accessed July 2010 Sundqvist A (2010) Documentation practices and records management: a matter of trust or distrust? Paper presented at: Questions of trust? Archives, records and identities, FARMER/NAET Conference, 5–6 July 2010 The Corner House (2010) http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/resources/results/taxonomy:112. Accessed July 2010 The National Archives (2008) Government knowledge and information management network and Knowledge Council. http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/informationmanagement/gkim/default.htm. Accessed 28 August 2011 Urton G (2003) Signs of the Inka Khipu: binary coding in the Andean knotted-string records. University of Texas Press, Austin Wheeler B (2010) Post-It notes and the end of written history. BBC, London. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10338038 Wilby P (2007) The reverberations of bedpans. New Statesman, 7 June 2007. http://www.newstatesman.com/society/2007/06/nhs-health-reforms-care. Accessed July 2010