Theories about Social Forms of Remembering

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Theories about Social Forms of Remembering
Young Farmers, Pastry Chef, Circus People.
Photos by August Sander, People (Man) in the
20th Century. Sources
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Recall Course Administration

• Handout 1 Syllabus, Grading, Schedule
• Course Server Site (access to documents)
• http//webdav.sfu.ca/web/media-lab/archive/2007/48
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• Handout 2 Partial List of Readings for Weeks
  1-4

Salvador Dali, The Persistence of Memory, 1931
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Presentation Dates for First Short Report
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Required Readings for This Week

• Zerubavel, Eviatar, Social Memories Steps to a
  Sociology of the Past, Qualitative Sociology,
  19(3) 1996, pp. 283-299.
• Connerton, Paul. Social Memory, How Societies
  Remember. Cambridge Cambridge U. Press, 2006
  (1989), pp. 6-40.
• Halbwachs, Maurice. Preface and The
  Reconstruction of the Past Maurice Halbwachs on
  Collective Memory. Chicago University of
  Chicago Press. pp37-40, 46-51.
• (e) Schwartz, Barry. Introduction. The
  Expanding Past, Qualitative Sociology. 19(3)
  1996, pp. 275-81.

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Other  Homework  Researching ideas for
projects by

• 1-Viewing
• a documentary film
• a  fact-based  fictionalized film
• An archival collection of images
• Must be about past events (can be very recent
  past) or the history of a group, a place
  etc.something that involves sharing memories
• 2-Doing  fieldwork .
• Visiting an historic site, reconstruction or
  public monument or building or event that is
  intended to commemorate or express memories of a
  group or event.

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Early Interest in Collective Memory Social
Construction of Knowledge Individual/Society

• Social origins of categories of though (Durkheim)
• Memory as a social fact (Schwartz, 1996)
• Social morphology, collective life
  consciousness as clues to understanding  big
  questions  (like the persistance of class
  distinctions etc)

Image Source-Canada Day Celebrations history
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Memory Knowledge as social constructions

• Maurice Halbwachs
• Social Frames of Memory, On collective Memory
• Revolt against rationalism, promoted idea of
  contemplation
• Influences
• Henri Bergson (importance of time as source of
  self-knowledge, immediate experience)
• Annales School of historiography (Marc Bloch,
  Lucien Febvre)  duration  (intuitive perception
  of innner time)
• Emile Durkheim (social morphology, search for
  causes and explanation)

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Collective vs. individualistic memories?

• Contextualized Social classes, families,
  associations, corporations, religious groups,
  linguistic groups etc.
• Constructed Members construct collective
  memories in the context of the social group to
  remember, forget or recreate the past
• Social Communication not individualistic
  consciousness or subjective time

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Halbwachs on Collective Memory as a Social Process

• a reconstruction of the past in light of the
  present (Lewis Coser)
• depends on social environment identification
  with groups
• Examine how we recollect things make
  connections
• External prompting Answering questions others
  ask us or that we suppose they have asked
• Reconstruction as part of participating in
  society
• placing ourselves in the perspective of a social
  group

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Themes in Halbwachs work on Memory

• Dreams Memory Images
• Language Memory
• Family, Religion, Class and Memory traditions

Salvador Dali, Dream Caused by the Flight of a
Bee around a pomegranat a second before awakening
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 Sites of Memory  (Pierre Nora)

• "where cultural memory crystallizes and
  secretes itself" (Nora 1989 7)
• "A lieu de mémoire is any significant entity,
  whether material or non-material in nature, which
  by dint of human will or the work of time has
  become a symbolic element of the memorial
  heritage of any community" (Nora 1996 XVII)
  (article by Hortloff)

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Sites of memory places

• archives,
• museums,
• cathedrals,
• palaces,
• cemeteries, and
• memorials

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concepts and practices

• commemorations,
• generations,
• Mottos
• rituals

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objects

• inherited property
• mementos
• monuments
• manuals,
• emblems,
• basic texts
• symbols.

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Non-places, Silencing Memories of Amish
Schoolhouse Killings

• Site where children were killed
• Destruction of Amish Schoolhouse

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Intangible Heritage as Sites of Memory

• Languages
• Practices,
• skills
• Traditions

African Drum Workshop, Healing Weekend, Black
Loyalist Heritage Site, Nova Scotia, 2006
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Innovations as Rejection of Memories of the Past
or revivals?

• Invention of new ceremonies
• new fashions (today could it be rejection of
  the burka?)

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Typology of Memory Claims (Connerton)

• 1-Personal Memory
• Connections with individuals life history
• 2-Cognitive memory
• Not necessary about the past but enabled by
  something we have learned to help us decipher
  past, present future
• 3-Habit Memory
• Performative but not necessarily grounded in
  specific memories

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Silencing Memories of Amish Schoolhouse Killings

• Site where children were killed
• Destruction of Amish Schoolhouse

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Censorship Iconoclasm

• Censurship Iconoclasm deliberate destruction
  of images rooted in religious, political or other
  socio-cultural beliefs
• Ex. Destruction of 3rd c. A.D. Buddhas by
  Taleban in Afghanistan completed March 12, 2002

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Problems in understanding how collective or
individual memories originate are used

• Difficult to link
• Grand Theory structural or contextual
  determinants (economy, politics, Zeitgeist or
  spirit of the times)
• Individual agency cognition
• Observable practices

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Example Multiple Meanings of Same Site

• Visits to the Holyland connect pilgrims the
  past in context of present (inspired Halbwachs)
• BUT vary with different generations, different
  groups (ex. Muslims, Christians, Jews, etc..)

Wailing Wall, Jerusalem
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Functions of social memories of the past
(Connerton)

• Commonly legitimate a present social order
• Factors issues
• Generational difference
• Experiences of the present depend on knowledge of
  the past
• Images of the past conveyed sustained by ritual
  performances
• Recollection cultural rather than an individual
  activities of commemoration and performance

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Changing visions of the past as a way to change
the present (Connerton)

• Ex. Acts of repudiation, like the execution of
  leaders.
• King of France during the French revolution
  (Connerton)
• Saddam Hussein in December 2006

Preparations for the execution of Saddam Hussein
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Life (Personal) histories and collective memory

• Rescuing the lived experience of marginalized or
  subordinate groups ?
• Problems in confronting personal histories with
  objective records (ex. Connerton, Zerubavel)

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Social Memory vs. Historical Reconstruction
(Connerton)

• Historical reconstructions independent of social
  memory
• Historians, evidence authority
• Traces of the past (documents, artifacts, first
  hand observations)
• Notions of truth
• Historical writing and politics (differing
  collective representations of memories of the
  past and its meaning for the present)

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Historical reconstructions and the shape of
shared memories of the past

• depends on group membership
• Belief disbelief
• Survival of witnesses
• Context (village vs. urban) different
  opportunities for deceit (film the Return of
  Martin Guerre)

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Memories as Habits

• Individuals (even bodily practices)
• universal or shared mental traditions or
  processes
• Conventions or norms or practices of sameness
  (rule-following behaviours like language systems
  or clothes)

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What binds recent memories and distant ones?

• Groups provide frameworks to locate memories
• Different groups have different frameworks
• Collective memory about communication
• in specific contexts between group members

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Collective Memory Communication/Media Theory

• Entries on Transmission Models of Communication
  from the Communications, Cultural and Media
  Studies Infobase expecially
• Shannon-Weaver Model of Communication,
• Lasswell Formula,
• Critique of Transmission Models
• James Carey Communication as Transmission and
  Ritual.

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Lasswell Model

• Communication as transmission from source to
  receiver
• Research Uses Study of Propaganda

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Maletzkes Model (Mass Media)
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Communication as ritual (Carey)

• Maintenance of a society in time
• Construction of an ordered and meaningful world
• Not mutually exclusive-- how are significant
  forms created, apprehended and used?

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Film Screening

• Sleeping Tigers The Asahi Baseball Story