Collective memory

About: Collective memory is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 4659 publications have been published within this topic receiving 78266 citations. The topic is also known as: collective memories & public memory.

On Collective Memory

Abstract: How do we use our mental images of the present to reconstruct our past? Maurice Halbwachs (1877-1945) addressed this question for the first time in his work on collective memory, which established him as a major figure in the history of sociology. This volume, the first comprehensive English- language translation of Halbwach's writings on the social construction of memory, fills a major gap in the literature on the sociology of knowledge. Halbwachs' primary thesis is that human memory can only function within a collective context. Collective memory, Halbwachs asserts, is always selective; various groups of people have different collective memories, which in turn give rise to different modes of behavior. Halbwachs shows, for example, how pilgrims to the Holy Land over the centuries evoked very different images of the events of Jesus' life; how wealthy old families in France have a memory of the past that diverges sharply from that of the nouveaux riches; and how working class constructions of reality differ from those of their middle-class counterparts. With a detailed introduction by Lewis A. Coser, this translation will be an indispensable source for new research in historical sociology and cultural memory. Lewis A. Coser is Distinguished Professor of Sociology Emeritus at the State University of New York and Adjunct Professor of Sociology at Boston College. The Heritage of Sociology series

Social Memory Studies: From “Collective Memory” to the Historical Sociology of Mnemonic Practices

Abstract: Despite substantial work in a variety of disciplines, substantive areas, and geographical contexts, social memory studies is a nonparadigmatic, transdisciplinary, centerless enterprise. To remedy this relative disorganization, we (re-)construct out of the diversity of work addressing social memory a useful tradition, range of working definitions, and basis for future work. We trace lineages of the enterprise, review basic definitional disputes, outline a historical approach, and review sociological theories concerning the statics and dynamics of social memory.

Collective Memory and Cultural Identity

Abstract: Problem and Program In the third decade of this century, the sociologist Maurice Halbwachs and the art historian Aby Warburg independently developed' two theories of a "collective" or "social memory." Their otherwise fundamentally different approaches meet in a decisive dismissal of numerous turnof-the-century attempts to conceive collective memory in biological terms as an inheritable or "racial memory,"2 a tendency which would still obtain, for instance, in C. G. Jung's theory of archetypes.3 Instead, both Warburg and Halbwachs shift the discourse concerning collective knowledge out of a biological framework into a cultural one. The specific character that a person derives from belonging to a distinct society and culture is not seen to maintain itself for generations as a result of phylogenetic evolution, but rather as a result of socialization and customs. The "survival of the type" in the sense of a cultural

Voices of Collective Remembering

Abstract: Introduction 1. An encounter with collective memory 2. Methodological preliminaries to the study of collective remembering 3. Collective memory: a term in search of a meaning 4. State production of official historical narratives 5. Narrative dialogicality and narrative templates in the production of official collective memory 6. The consumption of historical narratives 7. Generational differences in collective remembering Conclusion.

The collective memory

Abstract: How do we use our mental images of the present to reconstruct our past? Maurice Halbwachs (1877-1945) addressed this question for the first time in his work on collective memory, which established him as a major figure in the history of sociology. This volume, the first comprehensive English- language translation of Halbwach's writings on the social construction of memory, fills a major gap in the literature on the sociology of knowledge. Halbwachs' primary thesis is that human memory can only function within a collective context. Collective memory, Halbwachs asserts, is always selective; various groups of people have different collective memories, which in turn give rise to different modes of behavior. Halbwachs shows, for example, how pilgrims to the Holy Land over the centuries evoked very different images of the events of Jesus' life; how wealthy old families in France have a memory of the past that diverges sharply from that of the nouveaux riches; and how working class constructions of reality differ from those of their middle-class counterparts. With a detailed introduction by Lewis A. Coser, this translation will be an indispensable source for new research in historical sociology and cultural memory. Lewis A. Coser is Distinguished Professor of Sociology Emeritus at the State University of New York and Adjunct Professor of Sociology at Boston College. The Heritage of Sociology series