The objective of this paper is to reflect on the mutual constitution of an ‘ethnographic present’ and its historical trajectory in and through an archive. Through a comparative exploration of two archives- one, the institutional/statist archive of the District Crime Records Bureau of Anantapur district in the Rayalaseema region of Andhra Pradesh and two, the archives of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan, the grassroots organization that spearheaded the Right to Information movement in Rajasthan, I shall be reflecting on three related questions that have a bearing on the methodological practice of anthropologists in the constitution and use of archives in ethnographic research.
My reflections on the methodological import of archives would weave together (a) the serendipitous nature in which anthropologists constitute archives as ‘social documents’ in comparison with the treatment of archives as a ‘narrative source’ by historians; (b) how the ethnographer constitutes an archive to corroborate truth claims in the ‘ethnographic present’ as well as mark the absences and deviations between archival truth and the ethnographic reality; and, (c) how the ‘reading’ of an archive by anthropologists essentially indicates the mutual constitution of reality as well as an archive as a processual entity rather than an ossified object.
The broader objective of the paper is to re-look at the centrality of the uses of archives in ethnographic research as well as ponder over the specific ways in which the constitution of archives shapes the anthropologist’s craft. In comparing the two archives in my analyses, the objective is to show the improvisations anthropologists undertakes so that archival sources suit their ‘ethnographic sensibilities.’
