Images of Jewish identities in Lithuanian literature of the twentieth century: Grigorii Kanovich and Markas Zingeris

This paper deals with the identity concept of two Lithuanian Jewish writers, Grigorii Kanovich and Markas Zingeris. Kanovich, as a member of the Holocaust generation, writing in Russian, depicts his protagonists as spiritual and hardworking people with strong self‐confidence, resting on religion and custom. By means of the narrative technique of memory, Kanovich creates a literary resurrection of the Lithuanian Jews as a people which was almost completely exterminated during the Holocaust. Omnipresent pictures of cemetery and grave transform the Lithuanian space into a metonymy of death and, grotesquely, to the only place of home, being the “shelter” for the killed bodies of the Lithuanian Jewry. Markas Zingeris, growing up in post‐war Soviet Lithuania, represents the concept of open identities, changeable in time and place. Calling himself a Lithuanian writer who has been raised within a Lithuanian, Jewish, and, not least, Soviet milieu, Zingeris depicts his protagonists in in‐between situations. Writing in Lithuanian, speaking several languages fluently and working as translator, Zingeris embodies the cosmopolite. At the same time, though, he is a writer of collective memory. He comments on the apparent loss of the great utopia of an autonomous identity with ironic melancholy, pointing instead to the rich variety of hybrid identities.     

House-building tradition of the shtetl in memorials and memories (based on materials of field studies in Podolia)

This study examines house-building traditions in the Podolian shtetl, as evidenced by surviving buildings and by the folk memory of building practices. Using oral sources, taken from extensive field research in Ukraine, the study considers the extent to which members of remaining Jewish communities in the former Pale of Settlement function as “carriers” of this folk memory, and what they can tell us about the manner in which Jewish houses in the shtetl were constructed and their meaning as socio-cultural spaces.     

The self-interview: a new method in social science research

This article presents the new method of self-interviewing as an empirical tool specifically for use in memory studies research. The article traces some of the empirical limitations specific to the field of memory studies and reviews the existing tools used in this area. It particularly focuses on some of the limitations of qualitative interviewing, the memory work method and diary methods in generating data on the processes of vernacular remembering at the same time as making visible the meaning that remembering has for participants in their everyday lives. We propose the self-interview as a method which addresses some of these limitations. In elaborating the value of the self-interview, we draw extensively on fieldwork that we have conducted using this method. Although the self-interview does not divest memory studies of the need for a range of other methods, the self-interview is an important addition to its currently rather sparse methodological tool kit.     

‘When you have no law you are nothing’: Cane toads,social consequences and management issues

In this article we demonstrate that Yanyuwa people have detailed biological knowledge of their northern Australian environment, which is culturally defined and embedded within their relationships to country, resources and each other. Through a case study of the impact of Bufo marinus (cane toads) on Yanyuwa culture and everyday life, we argue that Aboriginal management strategies and Aboriginal peoples’ intimate knowledge of species and environment need to be understood as both legitimate and fundamental when engaging in management initiatives in Australia. We demonstrate that for Yanyuwa people emotional engagement with their environment is underpinned by a morality of social and environmental relations and that ‘memory’ is pivotal to this engagement. We conclude by briefly delineating how the adoption of a ‘moral ecology’ perspective goes some way to addressing issues pertinent to discursive encounters at cultural management frontiers.     

Mobilizing Memory: Bolivia's Enduring Social Movements

In Bolivia, the most indigenous of South American countries, powerful social movements have drawn on collective memory to build effective coalitions across significant differences in ethnic identity and awareness, class consciousness, generations and regions. We contend that this deployment of memory to strengthen protest identities is reinforced by pervasive indigenous cultural practices. Deeply rooted in oral storytelling, perceptions of time, place and a reverence for ancestors, collective memories help bring the past into the present, and create responsibilities to those who came before. The result is a mutually constituting relationship between memory and activism, where an instrumental construction of collective memories serves to provide shared meanings to divergent movements. We suggest that scholars of social movements could deepen their analysis by interrogating rather than normalizing the cultural backdrops that movements operate within.     

Speaking out loud: Muslim women,Indian Delights and culinary practices in eThekwini/Durban

I asked, ‘Did your mother teach you to cook?’ Almost an hour later, time consumed by mutual reminiscences of Indian Delights, stories of the tastes and textures and colours of food and life in Durban, at last when I thought it would never be answered my question swam back up to the surface of our conversation: ‘You know, then I lived with my oldest sister, not my mother. Her mother-in-law taught me.’ Too heavy a shift of register, the answer dropped into the bubble of conversation we had made around ourselves, imposing another reluctant silence. I could not ask more, not then. Deliverance came through other stories. We talked about the subtly different combinations of spices that women even from the same family choose to use, and the embodied pleasures of walking into a kitchen steamed up with the smells of several dishes all cooking at once. And for the moment we avoided returning to a family narrative of separation, loss and melancholy.     

革命历史剧：集体记忆的影像建构

革命历史剧是一种独特的大众文化现象,是集体记忆的影像载体。革命历史剧的流行是现实社会语境下官方意志和民众心态的不谋而合。在当下社会大众传播语境中,革命历史剧从叙事框架、人物塑造和细节描摹的三个层面进行流行式的文本创新,迎合观众对不同时空历史情境的参与渴求,从而凝聚共识,达成集体认同,完成主流意识形态的传播。     

我国社会信用发展态势与体系建设

改革开放30多年来我国经济的高速增长并未带来整个社会在信用上的同步跟进,其治理迫在眉睫。在社会信用问题治理上,最核心的举措之一是建立社会信用体系。对温州社会信用体系建设的实地调研可以发现,现阶段我国社会信用体系建设面临诸多的困境,这些困境主要存在于征信体系建设、联动机制建设、政府自身信用建设等方面。鉴于此,可以尝试借鉴整体性治理来破解上述困境,这种破解作用主要通过组建专门的信用主管部门、强化部门和区域之间的联动协作、完善政府自身守信机制设计、推进政府与社会之间的协同治理等路径来实现。     

外语学习过程中的记忆

记忆在语言学习中占有中心的地位。从感觉记录器、短时记忆和长时记忆三个方面,讨论了一些语言学习的技巧和策略;通过增加可理解度以优化输入;通过激活图式、利用"组块"、借助联想、使用关键词策略来加速语言处理;组织好知识系统,方便提取信息,以提高学习的效率。     

重建市民记忆：近代早期伦敦的历史话语与集体认同

在宗教改革到英国内战爆发之前的这段时期内,日益新教化的伦敦面临着传统集体记忆断裂的危机,同时,一个不断繁荣、崛起的伦敦需要共同的市民记忆才能在经济和政治动荡中维持城市的稳定。伦敦市民寻求历史资源以打造新的市民记忆。约翰·斯托和安东尼·蒙代塑造了伦敦市民史书写的中立化传统,在历史文本基础上打造的物质记忆和公共仪式,既能保证新教的主流地位,又注意接纳不同群体的记忆需求。但由于新教在市民阶层中不断发展,而且斯图亚特王权未能与伦敦市民建立合作关系,王权与城市在塑造城市记忆的过程中从共享记忆走向了竞争关系,最终在英国内战爆发时关系彻底破裂。在英国转型的关键时刻,伦敦重塑市民记忆的努力经历了“中立化→温和新教化→激进新教化”的过程,它保证了伦敦在一个相对较长的时期内没有像欧洲大陆的一些城市那样快速陷入社会撕裂的状态,维持了伦敦的长期繁荣,但却无力阻止英国内战的爆发。