Children’s cultural heritage: The micro-politics of the archive

Abstract

In this text, we explore the concept of children’s cultural heritage. We do so by investigating and reflecting upon the digitizing, categorizing and registering of children’s digital and analogue pictures in the Swedish Archive of Children’s Art. Children themselves do not agitate for the preservation of their own cultural heritage. As most archive taxonomies are based on adult categorizations, we ask what consequences this has for the preservation of children’s cultural heritage. From our theoretical location in Child and Heritage Studies and Science and Technology Studies, we see archived documents as infused with subjectivity by the way in which they are systematized and classified at the time of archiving. Thus, we approach the process of digitizing children’s pictures as a political practice. The micro-politics of the archive intertwines with broader politics of children and childhood as well as adult cultural heritage policies and theories. The analyses show which procedures are involved in creating a children’s cultural heritage, while also reflecting upon what notions of children become relevant for children’s cultural heritage.