Review: ■ Review Duncan Bell (ed.), Memory, Trauma and World Politics. London: Palgrave, 2006. 275pp. (incl. index), £50.00, ISBN 0230006566 (hbk) Martin Shaw, What is Genocide? Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007. 222pp. (incl. index), £14.99, ISBN 9780745631837 (pbk) Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider, The Holocaust and Memory in the Global Age. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006. 234pp. (incl. index), £16.95, ISBN 1592132766 (pbk)
About: This article is published in European Journal of Social Theory.The article was published on 2008-02-01. It has received None citations till now.
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Book•
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01 Jan 2002
TL;DR: In this paper, Margalit argues that the past, connecting people to each other, makes possible the kinds of "thick" relations we can call truly ethical, which are those that we have with family and friends, lovers and neighbours, our tribe and our nation - and they are all dependent on shared memories.
Abstract: Much of the intense current interest in collective memory concerns the politics of memory. In a book that asks "Is there an ethics of memory?", Avishai Margalit addresses a separate, perhaps more pressing, set of concerns. The idea he pursues is that the past, connecting people to each other, makes possible the kinds of "thick" relations we can call truly ethical. Thick relations, he argues, are those that we have with family and friends, lovers and neighbours, our tribe and our nation - and they are all dependent on shared memories. But we also have "thin" relations with total strangers, people with whom we have nothing in common except our common humanity. A central idea of the ethics of memory is that when radical evil attacks our shared humanity, we ought as human beings to remember the victims. Margalit's work offers a philosophy for our time, when, in the wake of overwhelming atrocities, memory can seem more crippling than liberating, a force more for revenge than for reconciliation. Morally powerful, deeply learned and elegantly written, "The Ethics of Memory" draws on the resources of millennia of Western philosophy and religion to provide us with healing ideas that will engage all of us who care about the nature of our relations to others.
657 citations
TL;DR: The authors analyzes the distinctive forms that collective memories take in the age of globalization, and studies the transition from national to cosmopolitan memory cultures in the cross-culture memory transfer process.
Abstract: This article analyzes the distinctive forms that collective memories take in the age of globalization. It studies the transition from national to cosmopolitan memory cultures. Cosmopolitanism refer...
416 citations
TL;DR: The following is simultaneously an essay in sociological theory, in cultural sociology, and in the empirical reconstruction of postwar Western history as discussed by the authors ; it introduces and specifies a modi cation for the reconstruction of post-war Western history.
Abstract: The following is simultaneously an essay in sociological theory, in cultural sociology, and in the empirical reconstruction of postwar Western history. Per theory, it introduces and specifies a mod...
368 citations
Book•
10 Dec 2004
TL;DR: The authors argues that the apparent'senselessness' of suffering has the power to transform dramatically the ways we relate to society and ourselves, and argues that our sensitivity towards this 'problem of suffering' is related to a new 'politics of compassion' in modern societies.
Abstract: "Sociology is always concerned with the causes and consequences of human suffering in one form or another, yet there is no sociology of suffering per se. This book is written with the understanding that if sociology fails to attend to what suffering does to people then it is left with a severely diminished account of human experience. Wilkinson maintains that a sociological response to suffering must confront the most unsettling questions of meaning and morality. He argues that the apparent 'senselessness' of suffering has the power to transform dramatically the ways we relate to society and ourselves. The book explores some of the ways in which our sensitivity towards this 'problem of suffering' is related to a new 'politics of compassion' in modern societies."
194 citations
TL;DR: The authors argues that today's search for identity, in the context of the rise of a new spirituality and the decline of authoritative memories, facilitates the forging of new connection between soul and memory and enhances the importance of traumatic memories.
Abstract: This article argues that today’s search for identity, in the context of the rise of a new spirituality and the decline of authoritative memories, facilitates the forging of a new connection between soul and memory and enhances the importance of traumatic memories. Consequently, we witness the sacralization of memory which in unsettled times, when memories tend to become fixed and frozen, can undermine intergroup cooperation. The article asserts that an ethical burden, prompted by viewing memory as the surrogate of the soul and the overrating of the importance of the politics of identity, can result in the displacement of public concerns with private ones. It stresses a need to rethink what kind of memory is compatible with a just, pluralist and cohesive democratic system.
66 citations