Dancing with the state: the emergence and survival of community archives in mainland China

ABSTRACT

Based on ethnographic fieldwork on community archives in mainland China, this article identifies three models of community archives in mainland China, and reveals reasons for the emergence and survival of community-based archives in mainland China: first, the regulations on non-governmental museums and social organisations can provide the legal basis for the emergence and survival of community-based archives despite the fact that the archival legislative framework, the centralised archives management system and the dominant statist archival paradigm seem to leave little room for their emergence and development; second, the purposes of establishing community-based archives can be consistent with or not contradictory to the political, social and cultural development strategies of the state; third, the relationship of contingent symbiosis between government and community archives can create spaces for the emergence and survival of community-based archives.

KEYWORDS:

• Community
• community archives
• community-based archiving
• non-governmental museum

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Professor Su Zhiliang, Professor Feng Huiling, Sun Heng, Xu Duo for their help with the research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

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Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Social Science Fund of China [20BTQ101].

Notes on contributors

Zhiying Lian

Zhiying Lian is a professor in the School of Information Resource Management at Renmin University of China. She earned her PhD in Archival Science from Renmin University of China, and she was a visiting scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles, from August 2012 to August 2013. Her research interests focus on community archives, disruptive technologies and digital archival resources, information culture, and information laws.