Remembering and (Re)remembering Social Justice in the 21st Century

deadline for submissions: October 20, 2024
full name / name of organization: Ben Alexander. Columbia University
contact email: bea3@columbia.edu

Call for Papers
New Volume: Remembering and (Re)remembering Social Justice in the 21st Century 
Publisher: FACET

Please Submit a 500 word Abstract by October 20.    

We are looking for 3, maybe 4, chapters to complete our volume that is in-contract with FACET.  Verne Harris will be authoring our Forward, Trudy Peterson our Introduction and Verne Harris our Afterword.  Chapter titles include:

• Bending the Arc of History Toward Justice: The Romero Institute and the Digital Transformation of Social Justice Work in the Twenty-First Century – Indigenous Rights and Environmental Justice
• Justice as Morality, Morality as Justice: Cultivating a Moral Vision of Archival Capabilities and Human Dignity
• Out of the Institutional Archive and on to the “Digital Streets”: Restoring Community Access to the Squatters’ Collective Oral History Project
• The US Opioid Crisis through the Records Lens: Corporate Malfeasance and Justice Seeking.
• The Archimedes Palimpsest, They Shall Not Grow Old and Shoah’s Interactive Holograms: Making Social Justice History Contemporary 
• Recordkeeping for Menstrual Data: Privacy, Mobile App Analytics, and Consent

From the end of World War II through the change in millennia intersections between the evolution of the post-modern archive and the formation of post-modern historical discourses intersected concerns for social justice within complex geo-political landscapes composed of fractious post-colonial environments, Cold War interests, and often violent confrontations (within western democracies) centering on demands for inclusion and plurality.  In general, the archive created precedent for the extension of Activisms around the world by incorporating new forms of material remembrance that provided precedent for newly imagined forms of collective memory.  Indeed, while it may seem quaint today, archives struggled to preserve unprecedented quantities of visual materials (both moving image and static) as well as new forms of manuscript materials (mimeographs, Zines etc.) that in their day seemed dangerously ephemeral but were absolutely essential to social justice movements.  Further, the archivist had to imagine new ways to engage new forms of civil rights actions and movements. 

Scholars, archivists and activists today are confronted with similar challenges.  Activist cultures are now largely immaterial.  Activist movements are often global in reach but shaped by geographically specific cultures.  The archivist today must assume new agencies to engage and document social justice actions and movements.  Indeed, the distinction between archivisms and activisms is decidedly blurred. 

Our volume seeks collaborative and international discussion among scholars (from a breadth of interests), as well as activists and archivists to engage the tremendous challenges that threaten the historicity of 21st century social justice movements around the world.  

We are especially interested in 6 categories of research.

1)    What distinguishes 21st century social justice actions from 20th century activisms?  What unities and agencies remain consistent among movements including Occupy, The Arab Spring, and BLM?     

2)    Has the evolution in the very nature of social justice advanced expectations of the archivist?  Must the 21st century archivists assume activist agencies?  Might 21st century archivists require sensitivities (perhaps training) that is additional to 20th century models?  

3)    What will distinguish a 21st century social justice archive from its 20th century counterparts?  It would seem that the very core of archival practice will require careful revaluation in new and unique 21st century contexts.

4)    Certainly, we are experiencing an unprecedented loss of faith in authenticity – a troubling advent for the archive.  How will records produced within complex 21st century digital matrices assume accustomed authority (based on their authenticity).  These are concerns that were vastly limited within the scope and reach of material world. 

5)    From a most contemporary point of view, we will want to consider the tensions between recent political evolutions and assumptions about the very nature of private information specifically and who controls information that is intended to hold government accountable more generally. 

6)    Finally, we are looking for a broad international perspective.  The examples of 21st century social justice referenced above (Occupy, Arab Spring, and BLM) are definitively international in their reach.  How might the experience of these previous revolutionary actions inform approaches to documenting more contemporary social dispensation.  We are especially interested in perspectives from activists and archivists from around the world.