In his TED talk, Everyone around you has a story the world needs to hear, Dave Isay introduces an innovative New York- based digital archive called StoryCrops. With the aim to collect and preserve stories about people from all walks of life through interviews, Isay has produced hundreds and thousands of radio documentaries, making StoryCorps “the single largest collection of human voices ever recorded.” As Isay puts in, this archive enables the preservance of human wisdom about their daily lives that can be revisited in future. It is not only beneficial to the next generations, but also to the people now. A powerful and inspiring story he shared is about how writhing the book, Flophouse: Life on the Bowery, gave neglected flophouse hotels dwellers in Manhattan a sense of existence, pride and most importantly, self-worth. Together with other inyerviews that are being archived, such as the one between a kid with Asperger’s syndrome and his mom, or the love story of an ordinary old couple, Isay’s work of StoryCorps brings out a strong message: “Every life, every single life, matters equally and infinitely.”

Upholding the same mission to record the “everyday lives of everyday people,” an Indian journalist, P. Sainath, launched People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI) in 2011 whigh showcases the labour, arts, transportation, languages, sports, environment, and many other facets of rural India in 28 categories. By representing people in rural India who are often absent in official documents, PARI exemplifies the idea suggested by Schwartz and Cook, that “archives have always been about power… they can be a tool of hegemony; they can be a tool of resistance” (13).

Suggested in the title of the two largest and foremost categories, Things we do and Things we make, Sainath makes his intention to  empower rural Indians through archiving clear. According to Isabel Íñigo-Mora, the first-person plural pronoun “we,” can “claim authority and communality at the same time” (Íñigo-Mora 41). By choosing the word “we,” Sainath creates a platform for rural Indians to speak on behalf of themselves. They become the insiders and the experts of the traditional lifestyle in rural India which they familiar with, and have the authority and power to talk about. The power to speak is especially given to those who are on the periphery and have not received attention in official documents. In particular, PARI carefully addresses the “groups which are marginalized within a marginalized group, like women and children” (Maliniemi 22) by dedicating two sections for women, namely Women: more than half the sky and Visible work, invisible women and an entire section on children in Small world: A focus on children. In Visible work, invisible women, for example, PARI brings the unacknowledged efforts by women in rural India into light: working in brick kiln and carrying hot bricks on their heads, weeding in the positions of bending and squatting for years, walking several kilometers to get water for her family, are but a few examples. By includes those stories, PARI recognizes women’s endeavor and raises awareness towards the little-known contribution of poor rural women have on India’s economy. It fills the “silences” (Carter 215) of women in dominantly patriarchal archival framework (Schwartz and Cook 16), hence, act as a “counter-memory for marginalized groups” (Maliniemi 22).

In spite of its effort to make the marginalized visible, PARI may in fact potentially further marginalize the marginalized group by its story selection. Throughout PARI, a vast majority of stories depict the hardship in rural India: high illiteracy rate, poverty, poor public health, political oppression, gender inequality etc. Rarely do successful stories are being told. The way which rural Indians are portrayed as “victims” who are the “passive and miserable populations…simplifies and reduces the dynamics between minorities and the hegemonic culture” (Maliniemi 25). By over-emphasizing the powerlessness of disadvantaged rural Indians,  PARI normalizes the fact that they are being marginalized and justify why they are unable to speak up for themselves.

Apart from the content, the medium PARI is presented also reinforces marginalization in representation. The Internet allows participation, theoretically by anyone in anywhere at any time. Yet, the brutal reality is that the world’s startling inequality creates barriers for low income regions to the access of the Internet. Rural India is a case in point where only 9% of the population have the access to mobile internet. Lacking access to the new form of technology coupled with high illiteracy rate may obstruct people in the rural areas to write their own stories without the assistance from foreign voluntary reporters who may not have a thorough understanding of their culture and history. Bringing archive to the dof oral world, thus, reinforces inequality against marginalized groups, like those in rural India, as only certain stories are being heard by a certain people who possess the power to access technological products (Schwartz 14-5).

Digital archive is undeniablely a breakthrough from traditional archive in terms of the extent of stories being preserved and the access to it. The enormous storage and efficiency allows everyday people to be included as well.  Yet, it is also important to acknowledge the potential of digital archive to unintentionally consolidate marginalization as shown in the example of PARI.

Works Cited

Carter, Rodney G S. “Of Things Said and Unsaid: Power, Archival Silences, and Power in Silence.” Archivaria 61 (2006): 215-233. Archivaria. Web. 17 Mar 2016.

Íñigo-Mora, Isabel. “On the use of the personal pronoun we in communities.” Journal of Language and Politics 3.1 (2004): 27– 52. Ingentaconnect. Web. 16 Mar 2016.

Maliniemi, Kaiser. “Public Records and Minorities: Problems and Possibilities for Sámi and Kven.” Archival Science 9.1-2 (2009):  15-27. ProQuest. Web. 16 Mar 2016.

Sainath, P. People’s Archive of Rural India. People’s Archive of Rural India, 2011. Web. 18 Mar 2016.

Schwartz, Joan M., and Terry Cook. “Archives, Records, and Power: The Making of Modern Memory.” Archival Science 2.1-2                     (2002): 1-19. ProQuest. Web. 18 Mar 2016.