Theoretical and methodological discussion on social and cultural memoryin international perspective (original) (raw)

The Ubiquitous Presence of the Past? Collective Memory and International History

The International History Review, 2013

This article explores the relationship between international history and memory studies. It argues that collective memory demands to be taken much more seriously than it has been by international historians to date and clarifies what this might involve. It comprises four sections. The first provides an overview of the growth of memory studies, identifying some recent trends and conceptual issues. The second explores how international historians have engaged with it hitherto, revealing that while memory has emerged onto the agenda of the discipline, with the production of some important studies, analysis of it still remains rather patchy and underdeveloped. It also contextualises a putative turn to memory against the ongoing 'cultural turn' in international history. The third lays out a research agenda by identifying some of the core issues to be differentiated in the study of memory within international history, exploring the conceptual issues these entail and pointing to relevant resources from within the memory studies literature that speak to them. A final section anticipates and discusses some potential objections to the argument of the article. It concludes that taking the challenge of memory studies seriously may demand a thoroughgoing reorientation of our practice.

Memory cultures and politics of history. A plea forpolish-russian cooperation

2011

Once upon a time a Russian and a Pole laid the foundations for modern sociology. Their names were Pitirim Sorokin and Florian Znaniecki. After years of 'dependent development' of Polish and Russian social sciences it is high time we came back to the forgotten classics. A joint study of memory cultures and politics of history is a very good point to start with. It seems there are some lessons we can draw from the noble sociological ancestors. First is quite straightforward: we should communicate with one other, as they did. There is no intellectual creativity without constant cooperation. In a long exchange of letters, both scholars expressed great interest in one another's 'theory, their growing friendship, and a deep and grave concern with the general development of sociology' (Vaitkus, 1994. P. 230). Thus-and this is the second point-rather than imitating Western theoretical perspective we should try, drawing on it, to develop our own independent standpoint, which will combine both theory and research. Third, following in Sorokin's and Znaniecki's footsteps, we should look at society in its entirety. On this view, memory is not some self-contained phenomenon, but a part of broader social processes. Accordingly, in our paper we present a general research-program to analyze memory cultures. In this, we begin by sketching possible approaches to study phenomena in question; we go on, then, to construct a perspective, which will allow us to define and explain memory culture and politics of history in Poland and Russia. Approaches to memory In analyzing social practices connected with a national past, social scientists can employ a wide range of approaches. In the first place, they can make use of sociology of memory and memory studies in general, the field that exploded in the early eighties (

Issues of Social Memory and their Challenges in the Global Age

Time & Society, 2008

The social experience of time is investigated in connection with the transformation of global power relations expressed symbolically. Collective memory in postmodernity is featured as a temporal distinctiveness of the global age. Consequently, problems of the politics of memory, followed by conflicts of memory come to the fore. Symptomatic for postmodernity in the context of globalization is the phenomenon of reshaping problems of memory into social problems. The global politics of memory and globalizing symbolic conflicts over memory are a new phenomenon. They are exemplified by the problems of memory in post-communist countries, with the focus on the case of Poland.

Exploring the link between historical memory and foreign policy: an introduction

International Politics, 2020

This article introduces the special issue 'Exploring the Link between Historical Memory and Foreign Policy'. It sets the scene for the individual case studies by illustrating how memory and foreign policy are linked in a complex and reciprocal way. Several mechanisms of (ab)using historical memory in foreign policy discourses are identified, including the application of historical analogies, the construction of historical narratives, the creation of memory sites, the marginalisation and forgetting of the past and the securitisation of historical memory. The contributions to the special issue are introduced according to this conceptual frame. The article highlights how these mechanisms are deployed in different national and political contexts, as well as how a state's politics of memory influences its foreign policy and relations with other states.

Cultural memory studies : an international and interdisciplinary handbook

De Gruyter eBooks, 2008

Over the past two decades, the relationship between culture and memory has emerged in many parts of the world as a key issue of interdisciplinary research, involving fields as diverse as history, sociology, art, literary and media studies, philosophy, theology, psychology, and the neurosciences, and thus bringing tagether the humanities, social studies, and the natural sciences in a unique way. The importance of the nation of cultural mem ory is not only documented by the rapid growth, since the late 1980s, of publications on specific national, social, religious, or family memories, but also by a more recent trend, namely attempts to provide overviews of the state of the art in this emerging field and to synthesize different research traditions. Anthologies of theoretical texts, such as The Collective Memory Reader (Olick et al.), as weil as the launch of the new journal Memory Studies testify to the need to bring focus to this broad discussion and to consider the theoretical and methodological standards of a promising, but also as yet incoherent and dispersed field (cf. Olick; Radstone; Erll). The present handbook represents the shared effort of forty-one authors, all of whom have contributed over the past years, from a variety of disciplinary per spectives, to the development of this nascent field, and it is part of the effort to consolidate memory studies into a more coherent discipline. It is a first step on the road towards a conceptual foundation for the kind of memory studies which assumes a decidedly cultural and social perspective. "Cultural" (ar, if you will, "collective," "social") memory is certainly a multifarious nation, a term often used in an ambiguous and vague way. Media, practices, and structures as diverse as myth, monuments, historiog raphy, ritual, conversational rememberihg, configurations of cultural knowledge, and neuronal networks are nowadays subsumed under this wide umbrella term. Because of its intricacy, cultural memory has been a highly controversial issue ever since its very conception in Maurice Halbwachs's studies on memoire collective (esp. 1925, 1941, 1950). His con temporary Marc Bloch accused Halbwachs of simply transferring concepts from individual psychology to the level of the collective, and even today scholars continue to challenge the nation of collective or cultural memory, c1ai.ming, for example, that since we have well-established concepts like "myth," "tradition," and "individual memory," there is no need for a

Historical Memory and Foreign Policy

Springer, 2022

This book explores the uses of the past in foreign policy-making. It outlines why and how political leaders refer to historical events in contemporary foreign policy discourses; the goals they hope to achieve; and the sometimes unintended foreign policy consequences of their (ab)use of historical memory. Furthermore, it looks at how political leaders shape domestic collective memories in pursuit of their international agendas, and highlight historical events leaders forget, reinterpret or obscure through selective narratives. The chapters explore a variety of theoretical concepts that shed light on how memory and foreign policy are linked in a complex and reciprocal way. The following mechanisms are discussed: the application of historical analogies; the construction of historical narratives; the creation of memory sites; the marginalisation and forgetting of the past; and the securitisation of historical memory. Through the use of a number of methodological approaches (such as discourse analysis, narrative analysis and content analysis of securitising moves) and a broad range of qualitative and quantitative data (newspaper articles, policy documents, commemorative speeches, interviews with policymakers and the observation of memory sites), the contributions highlight the interdependence of the international, national, regional and local dimensions of memory practices and history writing. Although they mostly focus on national case studies of foreign policy-making, they also reveal how representations of historical events evolve through interaction between political actors at the international level of analysis.

Cultural memory and the implications of this particular approach for the study of the historical past..docx

The relationship between culture and memory has arisen in different fields of researches like history, sociology, art, philosophy, theology, psychology etc. in last twenty years. In this manner, the humanities, social studies and the natural studies were bridged. The importance of the concept of cultural memory can be documented by attempts to synthesize different research traditions as well as by vast amount of publication on social, religious or family memories since the late 1980s.

Memory and History and the Act of Remembering

Re-visiones, 2018

In this era of global neoliberal necro-capitalism, we are increasingly faced with a political and social amnesia that yields results without the past producing more and more processes of dehistorization and depoliticization. In these processes is fundamental the logic of repetition (neoliberal), which produces at least two different procedures of (de) historicization. On the one hand, we have the logic of the Western neoliberal world, which functions as a mere transhistorical machine; On the other hand, in the eastern and southern regions of Europe we detect forced techniques to accept historicization as totalization. In both cases, the result is a suspension of the history whose primary intention is to discard any alternative it contains. Gržinic's idea is to offer some examples and, even more, try to define these processes on a much broader scale, in order to see their political, social and cultural consequences.