Starting from the proposition that documents do things, Asdal presented a practice-oriented approach to document analysis and explored democracy through its material and procedural arrangements. Central to the lecture was the idea of “document-things” as little tools of democracy: documents and documentary procedures that enable issues, knowledge and different actors to enter into and shape political processes. Rather than treating documents simply as records of democratic activity, the lecture examined how their circulation, modification and use help to ground and enact democracy in practice.
The keynote drew on Asdal’s recent article Democracy as a Social Epistemology of Grounding: Document-Things, Little Tools of Democracy, and an Exploration into Their Modes of Grounding, as well as Doing Document Analysis: A Practice-Oriented Method (Sage, 2022), co-authored with Hilde Reinertsen.
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