Appraisal is need of re-appraisal: reflections on “Confronting Jenkinson’s canon: reimagining the ‘destruction and selection of modern archives’ through the Auditor-General of South Africa’s financial audit trail”

Abstract

Over the twentieth century there were three moments of broad consensus around appraisal. The first, associated with Hilary Jenkinson, would leave appraisal up to record creators so that the archives would best reflect the values and intentions of record creators. “Confronting Jenkinson’s Canon” demonstrates shortcomings of this approach, citing the destruction of sensitive records at the Armaments Corporation of South Africa, a public entity, ‘as a cover up for corrupt activities’ (p. 170). The second, associated with Theodore Schellenberg, had archivist-historians performing appraisal with the intention of creating archives to support research by historians. At the end of the century a third consensus emerged, associated with Hans Booms, Helen Samuels and Terry Cook, that would have archivists perform appraisal on behalf of society, with Cook’s macroappraisal and Samuels’ institutional functional analysis both relying on archival functionalism to classify records prior to their being ranked for acquisition, based on the perceived importance of each function. Archival functionalism, which prioritizes the mandate, functions and activities of an agency, institution or corporation whose records are being appraised, is a clear source of institutional bias in archives. Organizations undertake activities to perform functions; the functions themselves are determined by the mandate of the organization. In a government agency, that mandate will include the need to serve the government, which is presumed to reflect the will of society. Cook believed that ‘the structures of the state . . . reflect the collective functions of society,’ and agreed with Booms that ‘If there is indeed anything or anyone qualified to lend legitimacy to archival appraisal, it is society itself.’ Apartheid and its terrible legacies warn against conflating the structures and functions of government with the will of society, as South Africa’s white minority used the powers of government to oppress the lack majority. Canada’s settler-colonial government offers a different warning. In Canada, settlers used the structures and functions of government to oppress Indigenous peoples, turning them into a minority through disease, assault, assimilation and aggressive immigration and settlement. Through the functions and structures of government, settlers seized Indigenous lands and violated the human, civil