Historical scholars often adopt a solitary ethic, conceiving of their work as the product of a lonely and isolated individual toiling away in a dusty archive. In this article, we assess the validity of this ethic by examining the actual practice of archival research. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with practicing historical sociologists, we reveal that the solitary ethic is largely illusory, and that, instead, the archive is in fact a robustly social world. We identify two core sets of social relationships in the archive—relationships with the archivist and with the archival community—that shape the historical sociologist’s experience in the archive. We further show that historical sociologists mobilize these interactions to solve concrete research problems in the archive. We thus argue that the archive’s social character should be understood as a methodological opportunity for historical sociologists, allowing them to maximize and extend their research by inspiring creative research strategies.

中文翻译：

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作为社会世界的档案

历史学者通常采用孤独的伦理，将他们的工作视为孤独和孤立的个人在尘土飞扬的档案中辛勤工作的产物。在本文中，我们通过检查档案研究的实际实践来评估这种伦理的有效性。通过对实践历史社会学家的半结构化访谈，我们揭示了孤独伦理在很大程度上是虚幻的，相反，档案实际上是一个强大的社会世界。我们确定档案中的两组核心社会关系——与档案管理员的关系和与档案社区的关系——它们塑造了历史社会学家在档案中的经验。我们进一步表明，历史社会学家可以调动这些互动来解决档案中的具体研究问题。