These concluding reflections assess how the contributors to this special issue intervene in key assumptions that shape the current field of archival studies. As the “archival turn” gains ground, forms of Euro- and state-centrism reappear in scholarship otherwise innovative in its attention to the textual remnants of the past. Here, instead, we explore the methodological stakes involved in defining both the “archive” and the historical power brokers who created and preserved a documentary record in pursuit of their varied social, cultural, economic, and political projects. The essay points to the resurgence of culturalist and civilisational indices for comparative archivistics, and follows the arguments collected in this issue to assert by contrast the often uneven and uneasy regional, administrative, and procedural definitions at work within preserved records. Identifying “mobility” as both a methodological tactic and a historical process, this conclusion presents a fluid rather than fixed textual landscape and presents an alternative frame for investigating preservationist practices.

这些结论性思考评估了这一特殊问题的贡献者如何干预塑造档案研究当前领域的关键假设。随着“档案转向”的发展，欧洲和国家中心主义的形式再次出现在学术界中，而在关注过去的文本遗迹方面则具有创新性。相反，在这里，我们探索定义“档案”和历史权力经纪人所涉及的方法学利益，这些经纪人创建并保存了纪录片，以追求其各种各样的社会，文化，经济和政治项目。这篇文章指出了比较档案学的文化主义和文明指数的兴起，并遵循了本期所收集的论点，以断言通常是不平衡且不安的地区，行政，以及保存的记录中的程序定义。将“流动性”识别为方法论策略和历史过程，这一结论提出了一种灵活而不是固定的文本格局，并提出了一种研究保存主义实践的替代框架。