Hi friends! I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas break and happy 2015!
For the past two weeks in ASTU, we have been studying about archives, and we briefly looked at the a site entitled People of Rural India (PARI) as an example. Established in December 2014, PARI is an online archive that records “the everyday lives of everyday people” in rural India through digital mediums such as photos, videos, and audio. Rural India is considered as one of the most diverse and complex area in the world, with more than “833 million people include distinct societies speaking well over 700 languages” (Sainath). Fearing the disappearance of these diverse characteristics of the countryside due to India’s rapid economic transformation, PARI aims to record and document these features to “save diversity” and “educate future generations” (Sainath).
As Rodney G.S. Carter mentioned, archives are “not fully representative of society”, and that it is “impossible for archives to reflect all aspects and elements of society” (Carter 216). Certain minority groups are almost bound to be marginalized and silenced in the state controlled archives. Ignoring and excluding these voices, as a result, could have a detrimental effect on “societal memory” and the “collective identity” of the group (Carter, 220). In this case, the incredible diversity of the rural India community makes it even more difficult to record everything. The PARI website is therefore a fantastic way in preserving the rich culture and unique history of these groups. Not only because it is established by an independent institution and not controlled by the state, which has the potential power to silence the minority groups (Carter, 217), but also because everyone is able contribute to the knowledge gap. In addition, its medium as an online platform helps spread awareness and is easily accessible by the general public.
The process of globalisation has resulted in an increasingly interconnected and integrated world. It is evident that the western culture has become the dominant culture and perhaps the ‘ideal’ culture today. It is also easy for us to overlook one’s experience or to generalise a certain culture group. In the long term, our culture will eventually become very similar to one another, and we would lose the unique aspects of each individual culture. It is for this reason that I feel that it is important to preserve tradition and record history, in order to educate the future generations.
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Work cited
Carter, Rodney. “Of Things Said and Unsaid: Power, Archival Silences and Power in Silence.” Archivaria 61 (2006): 215-33. Web. 21 Jan. 2015.
Sainath, P. ‘About PARI’. People’s Archive of Rural India. People’s Archive of Rural India, 20 Dec. 2014. Web. 22 Jan. 2015.