Collective Memory Anchors: Collective Identity and Continuity in Social Movements

Abstract

Drawing on ethnographic data from two social movement organizations, this article highlights the way that remembrances of the past are inserted into present interactions to help maintain a sense of movement continuity. Seeing collective identity and collective memory as intertwined dynamic processes, the article argues that the continuity of a social movement is maintained, in part, when movement members insert narrative commemorations that constrain current collective identity development. The process examined is that of “collective memory anchoring,” in which participants instrumentally and/or contextually bring forward the past during interactions in such a way that the formulation of elements in a movement's collective identity appears to mirror past formulations. The common constraints of preexisting networks, participants' shared cultural backgrounds, and a movement's collective action frames are explored.     

Looking Forward,Looking Back: Collective Memory and Neighborhood Identity in Two Urban Parks

Collective memory and narratives of local history shape the ways people imagine a neighborhood's present situation and future development, processes that reflect tensions related to identity and struggles over resources. Using an urban culturalist lens and a focus on collective representations of place, I compare two nearby New York parks to uncover why, despite many similarities, they support different patterns of meaning making and use. Drawing on ethnographic observation, interviews, and secondary analysis, I show that multi‐vocal and fragmented contexts of collective memory help explain the uneven nature of gentrification processes, with one park serving as its cultural fulcrum while the other is left at the sidelines.     

Palestinian Children: Authors of Collective Memory

This article investigates the premise that Palestinian children are the authors of collective memory. Palestinian society employs an oral tradition that propagates the collective experience among different generations in which the individual dimensions of each is apparent. The oral history for Palestinian children not only illustrates past events, it also provides the tool for grasping the present and traversing the future. In this ethnographic study, 12 Palestinian children from cities, villages and refugee camps in the West Bank were interviewed. The children demonstrated active roles in reconstructing previous collective memory in relation to their own experiences and vigorously restructured the collective memory as a prerequisite for passing it to the next generation.     

Social Movements and Collective Memory

This article summarizes key findings and provides suggestions for further research in the literature that combines social movements and collective memory. Existing reviews of the collective memory literature highlight the macro and micro levels of analysis; studying movements and memory adds a meso level of analysis. This review covers all three levels and for each level discusses research methods, the social consequences of memory activism, recurring patterns, and explanations. Suggestions for future research emphasize the concept of repertoire and its relation to memory. Tactical repertoires and cultural repertoires provide the resources needed to construct collective memories, and repertoires empower memory activists to engage the political sphere, create change, and nurture solidarity within movement organizations. Because the idea of a repertoire uncovers a process of remembering and is already a widely used term in social movement studies, it provides a resonant tool for future movement and memory research.     

From Collective Memory to Collective Imagination: Time,Place, and Urban Redevelopment

This article is about a place that does not exist, yet. It is about residents' perceptions of redevelopment plans involving the reconstruction of a defunct neighborhood firehouse. Interviews revealed the residents' “collective imagination” as they actively envisioned potential future outcomes for a firehouse‐turned–community center. When asked about the needs of the community, interviewees discussed the current conditions of their neighborhood (the present), its history (the past), and how they would like to see it change (the future). This corresponds well with George Herbert Mead's ideas about temporality. I argue that connecting the identity of a place to a sociological understanding of time (especially Mead's) is a necessary step for gaining a better understanding of the subjective side of urbanization and ultimately creating a better vernacular knowledge base for urban redevelopment plans.     

Mobilizing Affect for Collective War Memory

Taking a cue from recent works that assert the importance of affect in politics and critical theory, this paper examines affective strategies employed at Yūshūkan, a war museum attached to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. Although its revisionist historiography has been generally discredited by historians, over the last decade Yūshūkan has established itself as a key public site for neo-nationalist war memory in Japan. This paper argues that to understand Yūshūkan's appeal we need to address the affective economy it produces around the stories and images of the fallen soldiers. In particular, I analyse the image of kamikaze as a ‘sticky object of emotion’ and ‘somatic marker’ that is both emotionally charged and culturally mobilized. I examine several factors that contribute to its affective capacity: the culturally specific trope of the tragic hero and the aesthetics of self-sacrifice; an emphasis on their ‘ordinariness’ as fathers and sons; and the naturalized, almost moral expectation of the current generations' indebtedness and gratitude to the war dead. A close reading of the museum exhibits, catalogue, website and visitor books suggests that Yūshūkan's rhetorical force relies on the kamikaze icon's ability to arouse visceral and intense emotions. Produced at the intersection of affect and discourse, history and memory, kamikaze is a heavily loaded sign central to Yūshūkan's affective and sub-discursive mode of communication. By illustrating how Yūshūkan mobilizes subjects into its patriotic history and identity via emotional authenticity, I hope to add an alternative approach to the current scholarship that predominantly focuses on the discursive content of Yūshūkan's historiography or religious-spiritual function of mourning. More generally it is also hoped that this study will contribute to thinking through the role of affect in collective war memory by offering a culturally and historically specific case study.     

Collective Memory and Collective Fear: How South Africans Use the Past to Explain Crime

The past is a resource that individuals can draw upon as they try to make sense of the world around them, and scholars have long assumed that individuals internalize and utilize collective memories in their daily lives. Yet capturing and analyzing the deployment of collective memory has proven elusive. This paper offers a novel approach for tapping whether, and how, individuals selectively draw on their collective pasts to explain the present. Analyzing interviews with young South African managers and professionals, this paper demonstrates racial variation in how respondents organically introduce the country’s apartheid past as an explanans for current crime, and suggests how these differences are related to divergent levels of commitment by blacks and whites to the South African nation-building project. In so doing, the paper offers a method for examining how individuals selectively use the past to construct, justify, and explain their present-day attitudes and behaviors. The study further highlights the importance of attending not only to what people remember, but also to how they think through and with collective representations of the past.     

On Thanksgiving and Collective Memory: Constructing the American Tradition

Relying on the approach by Maurice Halbwachs who argued that collective memory is based on contemporary interests and concerns, this article shows how Thanksgiving has changed over time in accordance with the ideas of the day. Aspects of the analysis support Barry Schwartz's theory that commemoration reflects the historical past. Similar to the pilgrims' celebration, many people commemorate Thanksgiving by, for example, feasting and praying. But in contrast to Schwartz's thought, this paper also shows that there are other elements of traditions that have minimal connection with the original event. Forms of commemoration like the Macy's Day Parade challenge the idea that commemoration and celebration contain some connection to the initial occasion. In general, the findings lend support to historical research and theories that implement social constructionist approaches.     

Making Sense of Social Change: Observing Collective Action in Networked Cultures

This article presents an overview of rising trends in the study of networked interactions conveyed by social media technologies and the emergence of new meanings associated with social change. In recent years, a healthy amount of studies has focused on ICT uses within collective action, considering social media tools to have become crucial components of many transnational movements and social change projects. Crossing boundaries between social movements theories, political science, and communication studies, literature suggests that ‘online activism’ and increasingly networked interactions may have transformed the meanings and definitions associated with ‘collective action’ and ‘social change’. To make sense of these meanings, we identify three approaches used by scholars, which focus on (i) the actual networking of actors, (ii) the diffusion of new repertoires and frames through networks, and (iii) making sense of new meanings conveyed within networked cultures. We conclude by suggesting the need for more comprehensive research to better observe and make sense of how's actors define collective action and how they use social media tools when striving to convey social change.     

Buildings as History: The Place of Collective Memory in the Study of Historic Preservation

Using data from ethnographic fieldwork in New Orleans, Louisiana, I examine the “buildings as history” ideology of the contemporary historic preservation movement to contribute to the sociological understanding of the logics of the movement, the relation of collective memory to historic preservation, and, more broadly, the processes of meaning construction in relation to the built environment. I conclude that the preservationist emphasis on the inherent value of the historic built environment irrespective of that environment's association with historically significant events and figures provides a means both to defuse critiques over preserving buildings with “difficult histories” and to justify preserving as much of the historic built environment as possible, which then allows for the continued expansion of the movement's purview and ensures its ongoing existence.     

It Takes a Tragedy to Arouse Them: Collective Memory and Collective Action during the Civil Rights Movement

This paper examines the impact that collective memories of key events related to the civil rights movement had on black political activism during the 1960s. It proposes a theory that examines the effects of collective memory on collective action by considering how events and collective memories are appropriated by political entrepreneurs for collective action. Examining four events through a rare opinion survey of blacks taken in 1966, the analysis specifies a framework that illustrates how events evolve into collective memories and how collective memories are appropriated for collective action as time passes from the original event. Qualitative materials from historical accounts, including autobiographies, biographies, and oral histories, are used to make inferences about the meaning of events to political actors. The analysis shows that one event among the four, the murder of Emmett Till, had a stronger residual effect on black activism than the other events. The findings suggest that scholarship on the movement may have underestimated the impact of Till's murder on the generation of black insurgency in the 1950s.     

The Impact of Distance Education Technology on Blending Two Cultures

SUMMARY

The authors describe their experiences with distance education technology as it has impacted the development of a joint MSW program's shared culture. This phenomenon is examined from a symbolic interactionist perspective which focuses on interactions, shared perspectives, contexts, participations, and meanings. While most interaction occurs in their “smart” rooms, the authors have found one-on-one and in-person interactions to be the most productive in terms of creating shared perspectives, a vital part of culture.     

New Directions in the Sociology of Collective Memory and Commemoration

The study of memory straddles a wide range of social science disciplines including sociology, psychology, anthropology, and geography. Within sociology, reviews of the literature have already been carried out, but these are now somewhat dated. This article takes the measure of recent prior research on the sociology of collective memory and commemoration by (1) proposing a classification of collective memory research; (2) organising the literature under the headings of theoretical developments, methodological strategies, and methodological challenges; and (3) offering suggestions for maximising the internal cohesion and external utility of the sub-field.     

Collective Identity and Memory: A Comparative Analysis of Community Response to Environmental Hazards

Research has explored the ways in which communities respond to local polluting facilities. In some cases, residents mobilize to confront corporate and state polluters, whereas in other cases residents remain quiescent in the wake of documented environmental threats. The variation in community response is often linked to demographic variables, including age, gender, education, and length of residence; yet cultural factors remain largely unexamined. We examine how cultural factors such as community identity and memory mitigate the relationship between community residents and polluting facilities. We present a comparative study of two heavily polluted communities—Blackwell, Oklahoma, and Cañon City, Colorado—that had divergent responses to contamination. The data for these cases come from in‐depth interviews with community residents and various officials (N = 105), content analyses of newspaper coverage and relevant organization documents, and direct observation of meetings and organizing activities. Our findings indicate that cultural factors play a critical role in understanding the relationship between local residents and polluting facilities. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for future research on rural communities and environmental contamination.     

Theorizing Media Memory: Six Elements Defining the Role of the Media in Shaping Collective Memory in the Digital Age

This article wishes to untangle the relationships between media and collective memory and present the contribution of communication scholarship in general, and journalism studies in particular, to our understanding of the term “collective memory.” After presenting the roots of the concept, the article deconstructs it by providing six perspectives on the term: (a) its multidirectional disposition (from the present to the past and vice versa), (b) its concretization in media texts and other products, (c) the functional role it plays for the community, (d) its socio‐political aspects, (e) the technological qualities of the process of the mediatization, (f) its narratological characteristics and formation. Each of the abovementioned attributes throws a different light on the mediation of collective memory and provides insights regarding the role of the media in the construction of cultural memory and shared recollections in the digital age.     

A Matter of Time: Examining Collective Memory in Historical Perspective in Postwar Berlin

Abstract  This article examines how officially designated memorial sites marking resistance to and persecution by the Nazi regime in Berlin have changed in the postwar era. Clearly the content of memorial culture changes over time. So, however, do the political and bureaucratic channels through which memorial landscapes themselves are created, and thus the avenues through which states (in this case the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic) construct landscapes of official collective memory. Such an analysis reveals not only the changes and continuities in the form and content of official representations, but also the changing relationship between a state, its people, and the collection of officially approved objects in the urban landscape designed to convey representations of a city's and a country's past. Looking closely at these intersections also makes clear that the landscape of official memorials must not be identical with collective memory understood more broadly.