Scavenged state : archives and the making of modern China
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Scavenged State reconstructs the socioeconomic and political history of modern Chinese archives. A key concept for this project is scavenging, a term that is not usually applied to state archive creation. Often considered a desperate survival tactic that occurs in the wake of ruin, I found that archival scavenging in China was surprisingly systematic, strategic, and creatively optimistic. Over a century of civil war, imperial invasion, and revolution, certain caches of documents were privileged and then reintroduced as foundational for a variety of states, including Japanese-aligned, warlord, republican, and communist. When pressured to conform to international standards (such as those favored by France, the Soviet Union, or the United Nations), record keepers advocated for "Chinese-style" systems, deliberately ambiguous phrasing that reached to imperial precedent for authority while embedding contemporary political concerns about state survival in reforms of archival material processes. These processes—which included everything from document accession and indexing guidelines to exhibition strategies, destruction protocols, and security audits—reveal fascinating shifts in strategic conservation. My research on the development and implementation of these seemingly mundane curatorial procedures shaped the source-base that scholars and policymakers rely on today. Documentary protocols turn out to have been highly political. Recognizing the role of scavenging in the creation of state archives calls for us to decenter the party-state and make room for local and individual agency in summoning forth visions for modern China.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2023; ©2023 |
| Publication date | 2023; 2023 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Brett-Roche, Riley Morgan |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Mullaney, Thomas S. (Thomas Shawn) |
| Thesis advisor | Mullaney, Thomas S. (Thomas Shawn) |
| Thesis advisor | Chang, Gordon H |
| Thesis advisor | Sommer, Matthew Harvey, 1961- |
| Thesis advisor | Wigen, Kären, 1958- |
| Degree committee member | Chang, Gordon H |
| Degree committee member | Sommer, Matthew Harvey, 1961- |
| Degree committee member | Wigen, Kären, 1958- |
| Associated with | Stanford University, School of Humanities and Sciences |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of History |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Riley Brett-Roche. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of History. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2023. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/hn216hn9240 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2023 by Riley Morgan Brett-Roche
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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