Ethics of Archives: Improving Historical Social Science Through the Consideration of Research on Violence

Aliza Luft, University of California, Los Angeles

In recent years, social scientists have “(re)discovered history” by visiting archives, collecting documents, and analyzing their findings to answer questions concerning the causes and consequences of violence (Finkel, Lawrence, and Martha 2019:2). This follows a broader trend in historical social science, whereby scholars who study the past increasingly draw on primary sources in their analyses (Adams et al., 2005:27; Mayrl and Wilson, 2020:12). Historians, of course, have long contended with how best to conduct archival research, and issues of ethics in archival research have become a standard element of disciplinary historical training as well as a popular focus in Information Studies programs. Yet, as social scientists rush to the archives to examine primary historical records, they frequently receive little training on the methods and ethics of archival research. This matters since, as this paper demonstrates, methods and ethics in historical social science are, as with other forms of data collection, research design, and analysis, intertwined. Specifically, the paper draws primarily from research on political violence in sociology and political science, as well as insights from historical and archival studies, to show that the collection and analysis of archival documents requires scholars to make ethical decisions throughout their research and that these decisions can impact the empirical outcomes of their work. We identify three broad ethical minefields—the politics of archives, the role of researchers in interpretation, and the evaluation of harms and benefits to research subjects—and argue that research ethics in archival research should not be an afterthought but rather a central component of scholarly training.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 70. Theory and Method for Critical Studies II