2025/12/31 by Stephanie Decker, Adam Nix, Guting Shen
Arts and Humanities · #Digital and Traditional Archives Management #Diverse Musicological Studies #Oral History, Memory, Narrative Analysis
paper · doi:10.1080/00076791.2025.2598410
Business historians researching postcolonial contexts contend with archival biases and gaps, even more so than those in general archival research, due to the impact of imperial power dynamics on document creation, collection, and retention. These archival silences hinder the development of nuanced and inclusive historical accounts, frustrating historical understanding of diverse pasts. This article argues that triangulation – a methodological strategy of cross-validation using multiple inputs – offers a solution to these challenges. Through the case of department stores in Republican China, we explore three particular strategies: triangulating scattered institutional perspectives, triangulating with reflective ego-documents, and triangulating distinctive perspectives through diverse sources. By establishing the dual need for empirical and critical triangulation, we demonstrate how this approach navigates fragmented narratives, interrogates biases in archival creation, and reveals the socio-political dynamics embedded in historical records. Ultimately, we argue that triangulation not only enriches department store historiography but also offers a robust and explicit basis for addressing archival challenges in postcolonial research contexts and beyond.