Bringing research on collective memory together with research on episodic future thought, Szpunar and Szpunar :376–389, 2016) have recently developed the concept of collective future thought. Individual memory and individual future thought are increasingly seen as two forms of individual mental time travel, and it is natural to see collective memory and collective future thought as forms of collective mental time travel. But how seriously should the notion of collective mental time travel be taken? This article argues that, while collective (...) mental time travel is disanalogous in important respects to individual mental time travel, the concept of collective mental time travel nevertheless provides a useful means of organizing existing findings, while also suggesting promising directions for future research. (shrink)

This article investigates how national histories marred by racial conflict can be translated into narratives of group identity formation. I study the role of “identity-driven” museums in converting American’s racial past into a metanarrative of black identity from subjugation to citizenship. Drawing on a thick description of exhibitions at 15 museums, interviews with curators and directors, museum documents, and newspaper articles, I use the “political economy of memory” as a framework to explain how ideological and material processes intersect in the (...) production of exhibitions. I show that in addition to struggles over the truth and interpretive styles, more prosaic issues of funding, attendance, and institutional capacity-building hve an impact on representational selectivities. I explain how these issues affect black museums operating during the civil rights and post-civil rights eras. I consider the motivations and consequences of “remembering” national histories of violence and intolerance through the prism of group identity formation. (shrink)

The article reviews Italian semiotician and philosopher Umberto Eco’s vision of semiotics as a discipline, the aim of which is to study the ‘whole of culture’. It focuses especially on Eco’s trajectory out of structuralism and on the development of a cognitive semantics based on strong pragmatist principles, that inform his notion of interpretability as the key process of semiosis and on the encyclopedia as the format more apt to describe the cultural space. After a consideration of the interface between (...) the cognitive, the pragmatic and the cultural dimensions of semiosis, the article highlights a few open problems in contemporary, culturally-oriented sociological theory that could benefit from a deeper engagement with these concepts. (shrink)

This paper aims to describe the development of the recent wave of interest in memory and the past in general, as well as the overall cultural climate that encouraged this?invasion? of the past in both public and scientific discourses. While the first wave of memory boom was supposed to legitimate the emerging nation-states, the second boom signified the exhaustion of the old paradigm of nationalism, decline of the nation-state, as well as the emergence of a new paradigm: globalization.

ABSTRACT Scholarship in the area of social movements points to the importance of inter-group collaboration and alliance building. In the case of Indigenous-led movements and the issue of solidarity with non-Indigenous movement participants, scholarship at the intersection of Native studies and social movements suggests that such alliances can be built and sustained but that unlearning colonial attitudes and behaviors is central to this process. Through in-depth interviews with non-Native solidarity participants, this article considers how engagement with Indigenous thought and action (...) re-shapes particpants’ conceptions of environment and place. Findings suggest that such involvement calls attention to histories of violence as well as ongoing practices of dispossession causing activists to grapple not only with their personal and family histories but also with their evolving relationship with environmentalism. (shrink)

How does violence shape citizens’ preferences for conflict termination? The existing literature has argued that violence either begets sympathy for more violence or drives support for making peace. Focusing on the 2016 Colombian Peace Agreement, this article finds that victimhood dissociation strongly shapes these preferences. With victimhood dissociation, a discrepancy exists between objective and subjective victimization, and the effect of violence on peace attitudes depends on citizens’ subjective interpretations of their personal experiences of violence. Citizens who do not experience violence (...) often see themselves as victims of the conflict and vice versa. Victimhood dissociation is linked to cultural stereotypes of victimhood as portrayed in elite narratives concerning the conflict. In Colombia, political leaders framed victimhood around rurality, business entrepreneurship, kidnapping, extortion, and disappearance. In 2016, this widespread narrative was instrumental for politicians opposing the peace agreement. Citizens who disassociated their personal experiences of violence from their self-understanding as victims were instrumental to the failure of the peace plebiscite. (shrink)

Пропонована стаття являє собою розвідку з реалістичної соціальної онтології, присвячену дослідженню взаємодії між національною пам'яттю, історіографією та архівом як визна- чальними соціальними інституціями модерної доби. У дослідженні зосереджено увагу на проб- лемі становлення і трансформацій уявлень про минуле національної спільноти — носія суве- ренітету. Під час аналізу автор доходить висновку, що національна пам’ять, архів та істо- ріо графія наділені власною динамікою, а взаємини між ними являють собою мінливу консте- ляцію відносин, що протягом останніх двох століть пройшла складну еволюцію. Починаючи з (...) ХІХ століття, характер цих взаємин змінювався у напрямку емансипації архівів від нас та- нов офіційної історіографії, дистанціювання історіографії від виконання державної влади, та виникнення наприкінці ХХ століття нової меморіальної культури. Результатом цих змін стала поява афірмативної історіографії, що справляє відчутний вплив на суспільне життя. З огляду на ці зміни автор доходить висновку, що актуальною проблемою сьогодення є ство- рення умов для безконфліктної взаємодії всіх учасників політики пам’яті з метою уникнення політизації, спричиненої неузгодженостями в інтерпретації подій минулого. (shrink)

Two decades ago, East European state socialism met with a paradoxical fate. Between 1989 and 1991, communist party hegemony was abolished, leaving the very idea of socialism permanently discredited—or so it seemed. Yet in the decade that followed, “socialistic” principles and practices would retain—or perhaps acquire—a surprising degree of popular appeal. Was this a cultural legacy of systematic indoctrination? A strategic response to material insecurities? Perhaps a combination of both? In this article, it is argued that many previous efforts to (...) unravel the paradox are inadequate because they ignore both the “strategic” dimensions of culture and the cultural dimensions of instrumental reason. Using life-history data on the former East Germany, it is shown that apparently discredited ideologies can acquire renewed salience in the wake of regime change if they (1) remain culturally available as strategies of action that (2) provided material opportunities or symbolic privileges in the past, and (3) promise to ameliorate new problems engendered by alternative strategies. (shrink)

Dealing with memories of catastrophes is undoubtedly important for education. Yet, how is such an education possible? On which theoretical basis can we describe it? In this article, I build a bridg...

The burgeoning activity of Australian backpacker tourists visiting the WWI Gallipoli battlefields is analyzed to explore the rite of international civil religious pilgrimage. Drawing on Maurice Halbwachs, it is argued that this ritual form plays an important role in reimagining and enchanting established national mythologies. At Gallipoli, this occurred through the development of a dialogical historical narrative combining Australian and Turkish understandings of the past. The broader influence of this narrative on Australian historical understanding illustrates how global forces can be (...) integrated within the study of national collective memory. (shrink)

The number of traumatic events that occur worldwide is increasing, yet the literature pays little attention to their implications for leader development. This paper calls for a consideration of how collective trauma such as genocides and the Holocaust can shape the cognition of leaders who are second- and third-generation descendants. Drawing on research on the transgenerational transmission of collective trauma, social learning, social identity and psychodynamic theories, we identify three mechanisms through which collective trauma can be transmitted to leaders: cultural (...) artifacts, community events and family narratives. In this article, we introduce the topic of collective trauma in leader development and draw on the theories of psychodynamic, social identity and social learning to explain how the transmission of collective trauma occurs. We also propose how the transmitted trauma shapes leader cognition, values and behaviors. This framework can serve as a basis for future theory-building in leader and leadership development that will be key to the study of authentic and ethical leadership. (shrink)

This article examines historical transformations of Japanese collective memory of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima by utilizing a theoretical framework that combines a model of reiterated problem solving and a theory of cultural trauma. I illustrate how the event of the nuclear fallout in March 1954 allowed actors to consolidate previously fragmented commemorative practices into a master frame to define the postwar Japanese identity in terms of transnational commemoration of "Hiroshima." I also show that nationalization of trauma of "Hiroshima" involved (...) a shift from pity to sympathy in structures of feeling about the event. This historical study suggests that a reiterated problem-solving approach can be efficacious in analyzing how construction of national memory of a traumatic event connects with the recurrent reworking of national identity, on the one hand, and how a theory of cultural trauma can be helpful in exploring a synthesis of psychological and sociological approaches to commemoration of a traumatic event, on the other. (shrink)

This article articulates a sociological conception of settler colonial remembering as a tool of legitimation. Theories of memory in the context of settler colonialism generally center counter-memories by the subaltern or colonized, or official hegemonizing representations at the level of state institutions. Underexamined is the dialectical nature of memory and discursive representations that help reproduce settler colonial processes of accumulation and displacement at the micro-level. The article draws on archival data from avowedly socialist-leftist Zionist colonies to explicate patterned representations of (...) Palestinian villages that Zionist forces gradually displaced prior to and during the 1948 War/Nakba. I demonstrate how the colonial settlers attributed political meaning through five representational modes: contrasting the indigenous as backward and primitive and settlers as progressive and developed; denying an indigenous connection to the land; emphasizing amiable relations through the promotion of cultural progress and settler superiority; asymmetrically assessing settler and indigenous belongings to national collectives; and legitimizing land purchases that dispossessed indigenous cultivators, despite the settlers’ socialist ideology, while reducing conflict to the issue of economic compensation. I theorize a form of settler colonial memory based not merely on erasure, but on recognition and disavowal. Finally, I argue that local memory is a significant site of production in which the conceptual tools to both trace the historical processes of supremacy and subvert asymmetrical sociality lie. (shrink)

The work of William Sewell and Marshall Sahlins has led to a growing interest in recent years in events as a category of analysis and their role in the transformation of social structures. I argue that tying events solely to instances of significant structural transformation entails problematic theoretical assumptions about stability and change and produces a circumscribed field of events, undercutting the goal of developing an "eventful" account of social life. Social continuity is a state that is achieved just as (...) much as are structural transformations, and events may be constitutive of processes of reproduction as well as change. (shrink)

. This article inquires into the social function of guilt, especially collective guilt, and the implications thereof for collective violence and collective memory. The focus is on the relationship between collective violence and collective memory in countries that have experienced cultural trauma, defined as a dramatic loss of identity and meaning, a tear in the social fabric. Analyzing the dynamics—the mechanisms and processes—of remembering and forgetting such trauma, I argue that the idea of collective guilt is essential for making sense (...) of collective violence and collective memory. Specifically, I show that collective violence requires collective action; that collective action produces collective guilt; that collective violence generates perceptions—and misperceptions—of collective guilt; and that collective memory is formed, deformed, and transformed by perceptions—and misperceptions—of collective guilt. The article uses illustrative data from a variety of cases to illuminate these dynamics. It concludes by explaining why understanding these dynamics is imperative for responding to historic injustice in the twenty‐first century.Flash‐backs falsify the Past:they forgetthe remembering Present. (shrink)

This essay outlines one way to conceptualise the relation between cultural identity, collective memory, and artifacts. It starts by characterising the notion of cultural identity as our membership to cultural groups and briefly explores the relation between cultural and narrative identity (section 2). Next, it presents how human memory is conceptualised on an individual and collective level (section 3) and then distinguishes between small-scale and large-scale collective memory (section 4). Having described cultural identity and collective memory, it argues that cultural (...) identity is materialised in the environment when we retrieve and construct collective memories by integrating information from our biological memory with information in artifacts or in other people’s embodied brains (section 5). This essay ends with analysing how materialised cultural identities are constructed by using a niche construction approach from evolutionary biology (section 6). (shrink)

This essay outlines one way to conceptualise the relation between cultural identity, collective memory, and artifacts. It starts by characterising the notion of cultural identity as our membership to cultural groups and briefly explores the relation between cultural and narrative identity (section 2). Next, it presents how human memory is conceptualised on an individual and collective level (section 3) and then distinguishes between small-scale and large-scale collective memory (section 4). Having described cultural identity and collective memory, it argues that cultural (...) identity is materialised in the environment when we retrieve and construct collective memories by integrating information from our biological memory with information in artifacts or in other people’s embodied brains (section 5). This essay ends with analysing how materialised cultural identities are constructed by using a niche construction approach from evolutionary biology (section 6). (shrink)

The parables of Jesus have historically been attributed with a plethora of interpretations. The first hearers of the parables of Jesus had native (emic) knowledge of the social realities embedded in the parables told by Jesus, that is, cultural scripts present in the parables that might not be apparent to modern readers. Because of this, the modern reader of a parable might not be aware of all the different cultural scripts in a given parable, especially if these scripts are not (...) specifically mentioned or explained by the gospel narrators. Using the parable of the Prodigal Son as an example, this study argues that there are voices in the parable most probably heard by its first hearers that modern hearers might not be aware of. These ‘muted’ voices not heard by modern readers of the parables often include the voices of women and other minority figures. In this study, a case is made for the possible value that a ‘realistic reading’ of familial parables could bring to the interpretation of the parables.Contribution: It is suggested that this reading can contribute to feminist biblical scholarship’s deconstruction and reconstruction of gender paradigms of Christian theology if the voices of women are ‘exhumed’ from or ‘unhidden’ within, patriarchal and androcentric texts. (shrink)

Collective memory researchers predominantly in the cultural and social sciences have commonly understood the concept of collective memory as a mere metaphor, as something not existing in itself as memory but useful only as a tool for referring to the way groups construct shared representations of their past. Few have however addressed the question of whether it is a metaphor or literal in its own right. This paper looks at the plausibility of the claim that collective memory is a mere (...) metaphor by probing its presuppositions, where the representationalist theory of mind emerges as the ground for such a claim. Then appealing to the externalist model of the mind championed in recent studies of mind in disciplines as varied as philosophy, cognitive science, evolutionary biology, and collective intentionality studies, we try to expose the presuppositions of that claim, opening up possibilities for conceiving collective memory as not merely metaphorical but literal and naturally existing as memory. (shrink)

There are many different ways to think about what has happened before. I think about my own recent actions, and about what happened to me a long time ago; I can think about times before I lived, and about what will happen after my death. I know many things about the past, and about what has happened because people did things before now, or because some good or bad things happened to me.

In this paper, we aim to show that the framework of embedded, distributed, or extended cognition offers new perspectives on social cognition by applying it to one specific domain: the psychology of memory. In making our case, first we specify some key social dimensions of cognitive distribution and some basic distinctions between memory cases, and then describe stronger and weaker versions of distributed remembering in the general distributed cognition framework. Next, we examine studies of social influences on memory in cognitive (...) psychology, and identify the valuable concepts and methods to be extended and embedded in our framework; we focus in particular on three related paradigms: transactive memory, collaborative recall, and social contagion. Finally, we sketch our own early studies of individual and group memory developed within our framework of distributed cognition, on social contagion of autobiographical memories, collaborative flashbulb memories, and memories of high school at a high school reunion. We see two reciprocal benefits of this conceptual and empirical framework to social memory phenomena: that ideas about distributed cognition can be honed against and tested with the help of sophisticated methods in the social cognitive psychology of memory; and conversely, that a range of social memory phenomena that are as yet poorly understood can be approached afresh with theoretically motivated extensions of existing empirical paradigms. (shrink)

While memory is conceptualized predominantly as an individual capacity in the cognitive and biological sciences, the social sciences have most commonly construed memory as a collective phenomenon. Collective memory has been put to diverse uses, ranging from accounts of nationalism in history and political science to views of ritualization and commemoration in anthropology and sociology. These appeals to collective memory share the idea that memory ‘‘goes beyond the individual’’ but often run together quite different claims in spelling out that idea. (...) This paper reviews a sampling of recent work on collective memory in the light of emerging externalist views within the cognitive sciences, and through some reflection on broader traditions of thought in the biological and social sciences that have appealed to the idea that groups have minds. The paper concludes with some thoughts about the relationship between these kinds of cognitive metaphors in the social sciences and our notion of agency. (shrink)

We have a striking ability to alter our psychological access to past experiences. Consider the following case. Andrew “Nicky” Barr, OBE, MC, DFC, (1915 – 2006) was one of Australia’s most decorated World War II fighter pilots. He was the top ace of the Western Desert’s 3 Squadron, the pre-eminent fighter squadron in the Middle East, flying P-40 Kittyhawks over Africa. From October 1941, when Nicky Barr’s war began, he flew 22 missions and shot down eight enemy planes in his (...) first 35 operational hours. He was shot down three times, once 25 miles behind enemy lines while trying to rescue a downed pilot. He escaped from prisoner of war camps four times, once jumping out of a train as it travelled from Italy into Austria. His wife Dot, who he married only weeks before the war, waited for him at home. She was told on at least three occasions that he was missing in action or dead. For 50 years, Nicky Barr never spoke publicly, and rarely privately, of his war-time experiences. He was very much a forgotten and forgetting hero (for further details, see Dornan, 2002). In his first public interview in 2002 on the Australian documentary program “Australian Story”, Nicky explained his 50 year silence by saying. (shrink)

Reconstruction of Émile Durkheim’s views on collective memory is the focus of the article. Durkheim had not created the completed concept of collective memory and his main attention was concentrated on its concrete form, that is to say the commemorative ritual. Thereby he laid the methodological foundations for further development of the concept of collective memory and influenced on later memory studies. Durkheim’s sociology leads with the necessity for a conclusion that for the support of stability of a community, its (...) members have to remember certain things in a certain way and to forget, in an orderly way, other things. The general theme of Durkheim’s sociology is that a community needs a certain degree of intellectual, moral and emotional conformism of its members. This provision results in a more particular conclusion about the social necessity of the “memorial conformism”. The paper explores Durkheim’s work The Elementary Forms of Religious Life which takes a special position in the logic of Durkheim's research program. This book demonstrates the way to development of the general cultural theory of social, constructed on the basis of the category of sacred. However, for a long time this work, on the contrary, has been considered as less significant, almost marginal, written on a secondary ethnographic material. Only recently, in the context of the general cultural and anthropological movement in modern sociology, the “later Durkheim” was read anew. (shrink)

Very often our memories of the past are of experiences or events we shared with others. And ‘‘in many circumstances in society, remembering is a social event’’ (Roediger, Bergman, & Meade, 2000, p. 129): parents and children reminisce about significant family events, friends discuss a movie they just saw together, students study for exams with their roommates, colleagues remind one another of information relevant to an important group decision, and complete strangers discuss a crime they happened to witness together. Psychology (...) is at the heart of recent interdisciplinary efforts to understand the relationships between an individual remembering alone, an individual remembering in a group, and the group itself remembering. (shrink)