scholarly journals Memory studies: from memory to oblivion

2020 ◽  
pp. 30-44
Author(s):  
V. Ilin
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Memory Studies ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Past ◽  
Constant Change ◽  
Individual Memory ◽  
Cultural Construct

The article examines the concept of memory studies, which is a separate discipline that studies and analyzes memory issues. The phenomenon of memory is an important part of life, although not presented as a necessary condition of mental activity. Memory, the author notes, is a way for people to construct their past through books, movies, documents, ceremonies, and so on. In memory studies, memory arises in various aspects – collective, social, cultural, genetic, and historical. The reason for claiming a worldwide "memory age" is criticism of official versions of history, the return of memory to communities and peoples whose history has been ignored, the activation of various memorial events, and more. It is shown that a social and cultural construct collective memory retains the authentic past as its version and serves as a means to achieve certain goals. Collective memory is in constant change, which is nonlinear, irrational, and not always subject to logical analysis. New events and ideas affect the perception of the past, and patterns of interpretation of the past determine the understanding of the present. The relation between collective and individual memory appears as the relation between memory and history. The primary function of historical memory is to form an identity. The development of memory studies distinguishes the political, functional, cumulative memory that use the past to shape national identity. The context of historical memory includes the concepts of "oblivion", "custom" and "tradition" that help to identify the turning points of history as they are indicators of the emergence of a new society. Historical memory is a tool for using the past to achieve goals dictated by the current situation. Mobilizing memory and collective perceptions of the past has been an integral part of the political process in recent centuries.

scholarly journals Symbolic Capital as a Brand Tool of Sociocultural Life (on the Material of the Northern Cities of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia))

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 597-612
Author(s):  
Irena Khokholova ◽  
Natalya Danilova ◽  
Marina Kysylbaikova ◽  
Kyunney Pestereva ◽  
Alina Vasileva ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Historical Memory ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Symbolic Capital ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Symbolic Space ◽  
The Past ◽  
Art Objects ◽  
Northern Cities ◽  
The Republic

Aim. The aim of the research is to study the symbolic capital of northern cities (semiotic potential) contained in "urban texts" and the influence of the historical memory of a multiethnic region on the political process of the region and the country as a whole, through a comprehensive and interdisciplinary study of the symbolic space of cities in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). Methods. The study used the cognitive approach, the method of space-time analysis, and the method of historicism and questionnaire survey. Symbolic space as a text is a heterogeneous content. Results. The results of the study show the importance of a symbolic resource as a brand tool, first, depending on the political context and introduction into the collective memory through a constant "reminder" of its importance and significance in the socio-cultural and everyday life of citizens. The resulting databases of monuments served as the basis for compiling a virtual album of monuments and art objects in the cities of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). The research results can practically be applied in the field of education, politics, culture, in the study and promotion of the cultural and historical heritage of the regions of Russia. Conclusions. The urgent problem is the task of preserving the accumulated experience and values, places of memory, relics of the past, as well as ideas about the past that are stored in the memory of its inhabitants and the transfer of this knowledge to the younger generation.

Frozen Negotiations: The Peace Process in Chiapas

2006 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raúúl Beníítez Manaut ◽  
Andrew Selee ◽  
Cynthia J. Arnson
Keyword(s):  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Democratic Transition ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Peace Process ◽  
Democratic Society ◽  
The Political ◽  
Peace Agreement ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Government ◽  
Better Than

Mexico's democratic transition has helped reduce, if not eliminate, the threat of renewed armed conflict in Chiapas. However, absent more active measures from the government and the Ejéército Zapatista de Liberacióón Nacional (EZLN) to seek a permanent peace agreement and come to terms with the legacies of the past, the conflict will linger on in an unstable déétente, which we term ““armed peace.”” While this situation is far better than the open hostilities of the past, it also belies the promise of a fully democratic society in which all citizens are equally included in the political process. La transicióón democráática en Mééxico ha contribuido a reducir, si no eliminar, la posibilidad de que el conflicto armado en Chiapas se reanude. Sin embargo, sin esfuerzos mas activos por parte del gobierno y del Ejéército Zapatista de Liberacióón Nacional (EZLN) para buscar un acuerdo de paz permanente y saldar cuentas con el pasado, el conflicto permaneceráá en un estado inestable que llamamos ““paz armada””. Aunque esta situacióón es mucho mejor que las tensiones y agresiones del pasado, no cumple los requisitos de una sociedad plenamente democráática en que todos los ciudadanos participan en condiciones de igualdad en el proceso políítico.

scholarly journals Chasing the green buck? Environmental activism in post-communist Baltic States

2016 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 243-254 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timofey Agarin ◽  
Miķelis Grīviņš
Keyword(s):  
Political Process ◽  
Past Research ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
Economic Resource ◽  
International Networks ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Past ◽  
National Environment ◽  
Collapse Of Communism

The paper investigates the dynamics and volution of issues on the agenda of Baltic environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs) since the collapse of communism. The past research on Baltic environment activism suggests that these enjoy high visibility because they tapped the core societal views of natural environment as a crucial asset of a nation. As we demonstrate in this paper, the changes in agendas of Baltic environmental non-governmental organisations (ENGOs) make clear that the rhetorical toolbox of ‘national environment’ is often used to mainly achieve greater financial gains for individual members, rather than for society at large. We illustrate how the dearth of economic opportunities for domestic public has impacted perceptions of ‘nature’ advocated by the environmental activists, focussing specifically on national perceptions of ownership and the resulting actions appropriating ‘nature’ as a source for economic development, only tangentially attaining environmental outcomes on the way. The vision that the ‘environment’ is an economic resource allowed ENGO activists to cooperate with the domestic policymaking, while tapping international networks and donors for funding. Throughout the past decades they worked to secure their own and their members’ particularistic economic interests and, as we demonstrate, remained disengaged from the political process and failed to develop broader reproach with publics.

The Structure of Communist Politics

1972 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 498-517 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard C. Thornton
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Studies ◽  
Conceptual Development ◽  
Political History ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
East European ◽  
The Past ◽  
Restricted Sense ◽  
Analytical Tools ◽  
General Advancement

The past decade has witnessed a general advancement in comparative studies of communism. Yet, in comparing the conceptual development of the Soviet-East European and Chinese Communist fields, one is struck by the peculiarly arrested state of the Chinese side. By comparison, the “Kremlinologists” have produced a veritable storehouse of analytical tools with which they have contributed to the explanation of the nature and functioning of the Soviet political process and Soviet-East European interrelationship. Relatively little conceptual development is discernible in the China field. In this brief essay on comparative developments in the study of communism, I will attempt to compare the concepts which Western scholars have evolved to analyze the politics of the Communist world, account for different approaches, and analyze Chinese political history to determine the most meaningful approach. I speak of the nature and functioning of the political process in a restricted sense—the ways in which leaders interact, how political positions are attained and maintained, and, in general, the structure of leadership politics in the Communist world.

Colonial memories and transnational mobilizations: Asia’s colonial veterans and their struggle for British citizenship, c. 1980–2015

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 1129-1143
Author(s):  
Barbara Laubenthal ◽  
Daniel Schumacher
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Political System ◽  
Memory Studies ◽  
British Society ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Framing

This article focuses on campaigns by former colonial soldiers from Nepal and Hong Kong and their struggles for British citizenship over the last three decades. When analysing these mobilizations, we combine approaches from social movement research with insights from cultural memory studies. We use the concept of ‘relational fields’ to determine how these former colonial soldiers systematically utilized the past as a political framing device and thus revealed themselves to be not outsiders to the political system but equal players therein. We argue that their actions are best understood as a series of connected postcolonial civil rights campaigns that often reinforce rather than reverse romanticized and positivist representations of Britain’s imperial past. While in some instances colonial veterans were able to mount meaningful political interventions, our analysis shows that the veterans’ eventual acceptance into British society could only come at the price of their continued stereotyped depiction as colonial subjects.

Archaeology and Social Memory

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 207-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth M. Van Dyke
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Memory Studies ◽  
The Past ◽  
Road Map ◽  
Current Trends ◽  
Classical World ◽  
Contemporary Work ◽  
Treatment And Disposal ◽  
Native North America ◽  
Contemporary Past

This review provides a road map through current trends and issues in archaeological studies of memory. Many scholars continue to draw on Halbwachs for collective memory studies, emphasizing how the past can legitimate political authority. Others are inspired by Bergson, focusing on the persistent material intrusion of the past into the present. “Past in the past” studies are particularly widespread in the Near East/Classical world, Europe, the Maya region, and Native North America. Archaeologists have viewed materialized memory in various ways: as passively continuous, discursively referenced, intentionally invented, obliterated. Key domains of inquiry include monuments, places, and lieux de mémoire; treatment and disposal of the dead; habitual practices and senses; the recent and contemporary past; and forgetting and erasure. Important contemporary work deploys archaeology as a tool of counter-memory in the aftermath of recent violence and trauma.

Towards a cognitive pragmatics of collective remembering

2012 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucas M. Bietti
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Real World ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Memory Studies ◽  
Memory Research ◽  
New Approach ◽  
The Past ◽  
Discourse Processes ◽  
Collective Remembering ◽  
Discourse Psychology

This article aims to provide a cognitive and discourse based theory to collective memory research. Despite the fact that a large proportion of studies in collective memory research in social, cognitive, and discourse psychology are based on investigations of (interactional) cognitive and discourse processes, neither linguistics nor cognitive and social psychologists have proposed an integrative, interdisciplinary and discursive-based theory to memory research. I argue that processes of remembering are always embodied and action oriented reconstructions of the past, which are highly dynamic and malleable by means of communication and context. This new approach aims to provide the grounds for a new ecologically valid theory on memory studies which accounts for the mutual interdependencies between communication, cognition, meaning, and interaction, as guiding collective remembering processes in the real-world activities.

When a historical analogy fails: Current political events and collective memory contestation in the news

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 130-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis LF Lee ◽  
Joseph Man Chan ◽  
Dennis KK Leung
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Memory Studies ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Events ◽  
Historical Analogy ◽  
The Relationship

Collective memory studies have emphasized how people can utilize important historical events as analogies to make sense of current happenings. This article argues that the invocation of historical analogies may, under certain circumstances, become an occasion for people to negotiate and contest the significance of the historical events. Focusing on Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement in 2014, this article analyzes how references to the 1989 Tiananmen Incident emerged in the news as a dominant historical analogy when the movement began, foregrounding the possibility of state violence. But when state violence did not materialize, the authorities, young protesters, and radical activists started to contest the relevance of Tiananmen. The analogy was largely abandoned by the movement’s end. The analysis illustrates the recursive character of the relationship between past and present events: after the past is invoked to aid interpretations of the present, present developments may urge people to reevaluate the past.

scholarly journals A Critique of the Concept of “Non-Western Political Process”

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1(50)) ◽  
pp. 5-31
Author(s):  
Dmitry V. Mosyakov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Active Phase ◽  
The Political ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Universal Mechanism

The article is devoted to criticism of the concept of the so-called “non-Western political process”. Author expresses the opinion that this concept, formulated back in the mid-50s of the 20th century, is outdated today. The fact is that after the active phase of the globalization process and huge changes in the political, economic and social structure of Eastern societies over the past 60 years, the differences between how politics is done in the West and the East have virtually disappeared. The article provides evidence that now we can see a certain universal mechanism of power, which is equally intensively used in both Western and Eastern societies and states.

scholarly journals Presidential Address: Doctoral Theses and the Discipline of History in Canada, 1967 and 1985

2006 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
William Acheson
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
Canadian History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Language Groups ◽  
History Of ◽  
Doctoral Programmes ◽  
The University ◽  
Doctoral Candidates

Abstract A comparison of doctoral theses in progress in 1967 and 1985 reveals a number of trends in historical studies in Canadian universities during the past two decades. In 1967, 58 per cent of all doctoral candidates chose topics in Canadian history and the largest number ― fully 36 per cent of all candidates ― were writing theses at the University of Toronto, which offered the broadest range of fields of any Canadian university. Much smaller programmes existed at McGill and the University of Western Ontario; aside from these three institutions, no other university in English-speaking Canada enrolled more than four students. Two-thirds of all francophone candidates were enrolled at Université Laval, where only five candidates were writing on topics other than Canadian history. The political process led the field of interest in all fields of study, while social history of the Annales school held little interest for either linguistic group. More than half the dissertations in Canadian fields were supervised by only eight senior scholars. By 1985, marked changes in this pattern were evident. The number of active doctoral candidates had increased from 236 in 1967 to 294, and Canadian history was the field of choice for 72 per cent. Doctoral programmes and hence supervision had decentralized in anglophone Canada, however, and the University of Toronto's dominance had been challenged by Queen's and York; specialized programmes of some size existed at a much larger number of institutions. Among francophone schools, enrollment had doubled and Laval had achieved a situation rivalling Toronto's in 1967. Laval and the Université de Montréal now had the largest doctoral programmes in the country. In terms of topic, policy and administration had replaced the political process as the subject of choice for both language groups; economic history experienced a modest degree of growth, while the history of ideas retained its traditional level of interest. Social history had become much more popular in both linguistic groups, while less European history was being studied. These developments pose both problems and possibilities for the profession as a whole. Doctoral studies have been enriched by the diversity of interests, but the potential for academic sectarian strife is troubling. The need now is for syntheses and paradigms which will permit the findings of subdisciplines to be integrated into a broader and more sensitive understanding of the past.

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