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Dissertation Information for Marc Kosciejew

NAME:
- Marc Kosciejew

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- Library and Information Science

SCHOOL:
- University of Western Ontario (Canada) (2010)

ADVISORS:
- Bernd Frohmann

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- Michael Buckland
- Pamela Jane McKenzie
- Grant Campbell
- Nick Dyer-Witheford
- Amanda Grzyb

MPACT Status: Fully Complete

Title: Documenting race and ethnicity: The documentary construction of racial and ethnic identities in Apartheid South Africa

Abstract: Documentation studies are an important branch of library and information science (LIS), and has received renewed attention in recent years. But the concept of information is privileged within LIS. Information tends to be regarded as an immaterial substance; documentation, however, privileges materiality, shifting the emphasis from abstractions to material things used within institutions, infrastructures, practices, and daily lives. Documentation helps show how abstractions are materialized such that they can be controlled, deployed, employed, enforced, entrenched, and destroyed. Documentation studies therefore distinguishes between documents and information, thereby expanding and enriching LIS by offering different approaches and possibilities for scholarly research.

This dissertation contributes to LIS by studying the role of documentation in the disciplinary apparatus of Apartheid South Africa. In presenting a conceptual framework that draws upon the work of Michel Foucault, Bernd Frohmann, Ian Hacking, and Bruno Latour, it shows how that apparatus helped ensure the ideological mission of apartness at both the macro and micro levels of the Apartheid system. On the macro level, the creation and subsequent separation of different racial and ethnic identities were drafted, adopted, and turned into law through legislative documents. On the micro level, these identities were further reinforced through mundane and daily routines with personal documents and public signs. Macro and micro documentation functioned as a complex documentary apparatus, providing a tangible link between individuals and their racial and ethnic categories, thereby transforming them into lived realities by creating a seamless movement of documents through various institutions. As the documents made their way through the system, racial and ethnic identities became facts that controlled daily life.

Through a case study of Apartheid South Africa's disciplinary documentation, this dissertation shows how documentation studies can explore and analyze different kinds of phenomena in various settings. A documentary analysis traces, examines, and analyzes documents, what they do, how they are embedded and used, who uses them and to what ends, to what institutions and actors they are connected, what other documents they produce, what actions and relationships they allow or prohibit A documentary analysis contributes to information studies by showing the dependence of information on documentation.

Keywords: documentation, documents, documentary practices, Apartheid, South Africa, race, ethnicity, identity

MPACT Scores for Marc Kosciejew

A = 0
C = 0
A+C = 0
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2012-08-11 12:21:40

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