The struggle for the archivist's soul: History research and archival science - From partnership to the archival divide

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to comment on questions about the relationship between archival science and the science of history from an archival point of view. The background is the marked changes that have taken place in the understanding and framework of archives and archival science from the latter part of the 20th century up to the present. One may say that historians and the science of history have turned away from archival science. At the same time, the social sciences more generally and archival science have drawn closer. The substitution of the somewhat more modest Norwegian term «arkivfag» with «archival science» takes these major changes as its background. The term «archival science» has longer traditions in other countries and in other languages than it does in Norway. The shared understanding of archival knowledge as a science must, however, also be said to have become more commonplace in these other countries from the latter part of the last century. This is a broad development deeply rooted in fundamental changes in society and science. Key elements are the increased distance between archival and history research combined with other sciences' increased interest in archives as a phenomenon, the breakaway from positivism and the postmodern breakthrough, digitization and internationalization. In a Norwegian and international context, one may say that there has been a paradigm shift in archival science.