4. At the threshold of the future Already many times in the past the world seemed to have become smaller than it had been before. For example, Polybius (died 118 BC) (who by the way rightly conceived that the historian must also be a geographer and tried to set the events he wanted to relate against their local background62) starts his account of the history of Rome's coming to power in this way: "Formerly the history had consis ted, in a way, of a series of unrelated episodes, the origins and results of each being as widely separated as their localities, but from this time onwards history becomes an organic whole: the events in Italy and Africa are connected with those of Asia and of Greece, and everything bears a relationship to a single end." In the second half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of our age the progress of technology pointed in the direction of a planet unified by a consen sus prompted by logic and a universal movement toward efficiency. The belief in such a development caused an optimistic mood and was celebrated in World Fairs, one of which offered the occasion for the first international congress of archivists in 1910. At the end of the 20th century the world has grown smaller again. Everyone who watches television is aware of the interdependence of everything on earth. Everything has grown global: ecology, economy, migration, crime. But the picture is not as clear as optimists at the beginning of the century would have expected. The tripolar pattern of a world split in two ideologically opposed industrialised blocks which can be regarded as successors to the collapsed empires, and one underdeveloped block in the south has vanished, leaving mainly confusion both in politics and in world-view. In this confusion it is rather hazardous to try to imagine what will be the background for our profession tomorrow. Some lines, however, are obvious. Whereas the background of the first archival congress was a world in which European based empires were taken for granted and seemed to furnish a stable pattern for future developments, we now witness the end of the Eurocentrism which, after all, covered not much more than three and a half centuries.63 At the same time a process of erosion of sovereignty is going on within the nation states we are accustomed to.64 The process of transfer of elements of state power to supranational organisations is being accompanied by a growing significance of regions uniting nation states or parts of them on a basis of vicinity, economic interdependence, and cultural similarities. Finally there are strong indications that cultural antagonisms are on their way to replacing ideological confronta tions.65 This phenomenon, in combination with world-wide migration move ments causing cultural minorities in many countries, leads to an intricate pattern of competing loyalties within individuals and populations and is not affected by the boundaries of traditional national states. The current penchant for cultural identity is being fuelled by the conceptual confusion caused by the collapse of ideologies, broken traditional links in rapidly industrialised new countries and disappointment with the results of adopting "Western" values and methods.66 How will this background affect the work of archivists both on the international scene and at home? The agenda set by those who responded to my questionnaire has a colourful look. A wide variety of activities is being proposed corresponding with the well-known objectives of ICA: the supporting of the development of archives for the preservation of the archival heritage, the promoting of records and archives management, the strengthening of relations between professionals in the archival field and the promotion of the use of archives. On the whole the proposals constitute a colourful sample card of activities in which colleagues are engaged or want to engage. It would lead too far to list here all these more or less precisely specified ideas and desires. Nor would there be any need for it because such a list would differ only in a few details from a list of activities in the past. Moreover, it would be of limited use to ICA's policy makers or programme developers, not only because it would be difficult to find out which projects would deserve priority but also because several ideas contradict each other mutually. Some colleagues want ICA to go on organising world congresses and sending experts, others think that these things should stop; according to some colleagues the content of speeches should not be too specia list, others condemn any paper which fails to reach the peak of current wisdom; some archivists in young countries urge that microfilms of colonial archives should be given to them, others think that the money required would better be spent on improving health services. It is possible, however, to distil from the variety of answers some tendencies. Among the proposed priorities there are, actually, only a few which derive from expectations about the future. Technological development forces toward ever more encompassing unification of working methods and the standardisation of concepts and formats, and demands compatibility of equipment. It is quite clear that an international organisation of archivists must play a role in these processes. Further international research will be required into new technologies for permanent preservation of information. In this connection it is worth noticing that the ongoing technical develop ment with regard to preservation, methods of improving access to documents, networks facilitating communication and the like leads towards the disintegra tion of the profession. The variety of specialist groups within ICA is a reflection of this phenomenon, which doubtless will go on. Perhaps in more than one of them it will become clear that there are many reasons to link up with those who were our brothers in arms at the beginning of the century, the librarians. At first sight, most suggestions for future activities can be regarded to pertain to continuation of existing strands of policy. Almost without exception they are formulated in such ways that they can be considered as a form of critical judge ment on experiences in the past. The general trend can not be misunderstood: with regard to any project being planned, there is a strong demand for more attention to be paid to practice, the real situation in loco with its peculiarities, specific positive and negative factors. One of the respondents presses ICA to carry out a world-wide inquiry into the situation of archives in order to collect comparable data which are thought to be helpful in establishing priorities and directing development efforts in the future. More attention to the local DE PROFESSIE 63 Stephen Toulmin, Cosmopolis; The Hidden Agenda of Modernity (1990), p. 3. 64 Peter Drucker, Landmarks for Tomorrow (1965). 178 JAN VAN DEN BROEK FROM BRUSSELS TO BEIJING 65 Interview with Samuel Huntington, NRC-Handelsblad, June 26, 1993, p. 9; Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (1992), p. 234. 66 Mark Juergensmeyer, A new cold war? Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State (1993), pp. 11-25. 179

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Jaarboeken Stichting Archiefpublicaties | 1999 | | pagina 91