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This paper presents the findings of research aimed at verifying Peter H. Kahn Jr.'s thesis on environmental generational amnesia. It was conducted in 2022 in a local community affected by environmental contamination. The settlement in Szopienice contained a non-ferrous metals plant, which operated for several decades and had negative impacts on the surrounding area. The consequences were particularly severe for local children, who suffered from lead poisoning. To verify Kahn's thesis, the researchers conducted 17 in-depth interviews with the inhabitants of Szopienice.During analysis of the interviews, the authors were mainly interested in the strategies the interviewees used to reduce the cognitive dissonance between the state of environmental contamination in Szopienice, as they remember it, and today's knowledge of the magnitude of environmental contamination. The theoretical framework for this analysis was the study of collective memory, with particular emphasis on exploring the concept of normality and with reference to the concepts of Alfred Schütz. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research studies on collective memory in Poland have long tradition and clear cultural perspective. The aim of the text is to show this research tradition, which is deeply associated with Durkheimian School legacy, very strong in Poland, both in prewar as well as in postwar period, especially in the work of Stefan Czarnowski, the only Polish member of this School. In this perspective the social memory is closely connected with culture and time. These two categories: culture and social time as important factors in collective memory studies conducted in Poland are object of the present paper. The paper is composed of three parts. In the first one author explains why relations between social memory, culture and social time are important for evaluation of the Polish research tradition. The second part concerns its cultural perspective and is dedicated to the works of Stefan Czarnowski, who started many years ago the cultural stream in Polish memory studies. The third part presents the idea of social time and relations between sociology of time and memory studies in Polish sociology. This specificity of the Polish research studies on collective memory is unknown today, especially for foreign researchers. This tradition is worthy to be recollected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to draw attention to the importance of the body in the shaping of personal, family and national memories, and in the process of giving meaning to history and making it understandable, even in its contradictions. Through an ethnographic research carried out in Poland, the paper focus mainly on the construction of family resemblances as an embodied experience of the past, and an entry point for studies on collective and personal memories. Three points will be discussed. First, the relationship between body and memory occurs in the tension between history and heredity, the latter covering both social and biological transmissions. A second nexus between corporeality and memory in family narratives is constructed on a "gendered" and "ethnicized" image of the individual and the social body. Third, memory has been considered as a technique of the body involving senses and practical skills. The concept of embodiment then contributes to a more dynamic, performative and inter-subjective understanding of memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the paper is to consider such ethnolinguistic categories as magic, connotation, and cognitive blending as possible keys to the following questions: How is it possible that we can perfectly adopt different representations of the past and internalize them as our past? How can we reconcile different representations of the past and how is it possible that diverse representations of the past merge in one social memory? Such amalgamations of various forms of representations and diverse scales of objectification can be clarified by means of the theory of magic, by means of the law of resemblance, and the law of contiguity. Such considerations are supported here by empirical study of the construction of social memories in Teschen Silesia, which was divided between Poland and Czechoslovakia in 1920. On both sides of the new border different state institutions emerged and influenced local memories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we attempt to show the fruitfulness of the theory of communicative action for memory studies. Specifically, we intend to demonstrate that concepts characteristic of the discipline, such as "history," "memory," and "dialogue," reflect three types of universal validity claims: "memory" formulates claims to authenticity, "history" formulates claims to truth, and "dialogue" formulates claims to rightness. Thus, it is possible to introduce a seminal Habermasian notion of rationality that rests on validity claims. This notion can serve to integrate, enrich, and identify blind spots in memory studies. Our purpose is to demonstrate the relevance of collective memory to social cohesion (cultural reproduction, social integration, and socialization) and the public sphere (its development and atrophy, rationalization, and colonization). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses (West) Germany as an exemplary case to analyse the formation of collective memories over a period of more than two decades after 1945. It traces the formation of collective memories in the German public through a decade of collective amnesia, followed by a period of regaining collective memories. It argues that the formation of collective memories is embedded in social and normative change, and identifies three causal factors that were responsible for the oscillation between amnesia and memory: the absence of victims in the imminent post-war period, that promoted the 'myth of innocence' (Fulbrook 1999); a series of major trials that started in the 1960s; and young elites who acknowledged moral and legal guilt and supported the trials, reconciliation and compensation. Data from public opinion polls covering the period from 1950-1970 are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the struggle to shape and dominate the collective memory of the June 25, 1976 protest in the Polish city of Radom. First, I explain how the Polish Communist state attempted to shape the memory of the event as a criminal riot by stigmatizing the protesting workers' as hooligans. Second, I describe the campaign by the Workers Defense Committee, KOR, to create a counter-narrative of the event. Finally, I describe the continuing efforts by local leaders in Radom to remember and commemorate the protest. The combined effect of these various projects has resulted in pushing the actual participants, the protesting workers, to the symbolic margin of the event. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]