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Annual Reviews is a nonprofit publisher since 1963. Annual Review of Anthropology began in 1972 and broadly publishes within the anthropological field.

Referring archives as orphanages/hospices and performances, the main argument suggests that ethics codes of archives processes of consent and anonymization need to be reconsidered. The author highlights the role of archivists as mediators, operating liminal spaces (the archive) which gives way to the performance aspect and power of decisions made in the archival method. Recognizing this acknowledges that archival researchers need to pay attention to the weaknesses of standard anonymization, consent and access by mediating the issues that may arise.

Examples include navigating copyright with orphanages/hospices data and performance record keeping encouraging archivist researchers to make all parts of the research processes as accessible data.

The image of archives as liminal zones as a space between remembering and forgetting stuck out to me which also contributes to the future.

Much like archives, the concept of security is thought to be overly applied. However, leaving the concept as something too broad to specify leaves researchers and policymakers unaccountable for decisions made on security. Additionally, on privacy, Solove has offered metaphors to better capture the relationship between individuals, society, and governance by challenging the view of “big brother” as an appropriate metaphor for today. Instead, Solove suggests that Kafka’s The Trial might better stand.

The text builds from Derrida, Foucault, and Trouillot as well as archival theorists. The text advances methodological approaches through metaphors.

What concepts, ideas and examples from this text contribute to the theory and practice of archive ethnography? The idea that data curation practices are “performative” (p. 156) is an important consideration for the data collection and curation practices for both archive ethnography and social science research in general. As Mauthner & Gardos (2015) write, “Data curation practices are ‘performative’ in that they help bring into being the data they ostensibly preserve” (p. 156).

What is the main argument, narrative, or e/affectThe authors argue that the making of an archive is an act of power, which influences the structure and content of the archive—data—itself. According to Mauthner & Gardos (2015), “Data curation and archival practices… can be understood as historically—and culturally—specific and contingent ‘metaphysical practices that necessarily enact specific metaphysical commitments to the exclusion of others’” (p. 156). By this they mean that archives consist of both the processes of memory-making and forgetting.

The article builds on the work of Derrida and Foucault to argue that data curation practices in social science quantitative research data are not merely neutral techniques but are perfomative as in these practices are constitutive of the very data that is being preserved.

The article provides a number of philosophical insights on how we are anthropologists should engage with archives and the prevailing practices that continue to this day. Drawing from Derrida's Archive Fever, the authors push forward the post modern mission to take on archives, the archivists and the process of archiving itself as objects of study, complicating their understanding as being constitutive of the very 'past' and 'memory' that they seek to preserve.