The silence of the archive: post-colonialism and the practice of historical reconstruction from archival evidence

Stephanie Decker

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: History as a discipline has been accused of being a-theoretical. For business historians working at business schools, however, the issue of methodology looms larger, as it is hard to make contributions to social science debates without explicating one’s disciplinary methodology. This paper seeks to outline an important aspect of historical methodology, which is data collection from archives. In this area, postcolonialism has made significant methodological contributions not just for non-Western history, as it has emphasized the importance of considering how archives were created, and how one can legitimately use them despite their limitations.

Keywords: Business History; Historiography; Historical Methodology; Qualitative Methodology; Organization Studies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B0 B49 N01 N8 N80 N87 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-02-22
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-hpe
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:37280

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