What is recorded is never simply ‘what happened’: Record keeping in modern organizational culture |
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| Authors: | Ciaran B Trace |
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| Institution: | (1) Department of Information Studies, University of California Los Angeles, Box 951520, 90095 Los Angeles, CA, USA |
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| Abstract: | Traditional premises in archival theory and practice hold that archival records are authentic as to procedure and impartial
as to creation because they are created as a means for, and as a by-product of, action, and not for the sake of posterity.
Such Positivist assumptions about the nature of records have come under sustained scrutiny in the archival literature over
the past decade. The post-Positivist view of records embraces the record as a socially constructed and maintained entity.
This paper situates itself within this new paradigm in an exploration of the beginning of the life of the record. It is therefore
concerned with the creator (or recorder) and the social construction of the record. In expanding beyond a purely administrative-
and juridical-based theory of records, this paper draws upon research from other disciplines, such as sociology, in order
to place records and record keeping within a framework that allows for an understanding of their social nature. In particular,
the goal is to determine the underlying social factors that directly influence and shape the creation and keeping of records
and to begin to understand how these factors manifest themselves in the construction of the record. |
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| Keywords: | archival theory documents ethnomethodology law enforcement organizational record keeping paperwork records research methodology social theory |
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