Search

Ritual practices as behavior, and the cognitive acknowledgment of life and death, foster a depth in social identity, collective social memory, and a societal worldview. This paper outlines the evidence of Early Bronze Age burial practices in northwestern Iran to discuss the newly discovered chamber tombs at Kohne Tepesi within the broader context of mortuary practices during the middle and last part of the 3rd millennium b.c. The findings from Kohne Tepesi support the idea that, at least for parts of Kura-Araxes society, burial rites and commemoration of the dead played a crucial role in their worldview. Furthermore, this site demonstrates that the changes in symbolic practices and social behavior during the Early Kurgan period were not spontaneous but rooted in the last phases of the Kura-Araxes period and that the perceptions of earlier traditions had been conserved in long-term social memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I study memories of the Allied occupation of Maraş, Mersin and İzmir that were published in local newspapers between the 1920s and 1960s. The narratives were published when Muslims had re-gained political hegemony and forced both the occupying armies and most local non-Muslims to leave the country for good. The texts I use were published in the dailies Sebilürrreşad in 1921 (in Istanbul), in Ahenk in 1926, in Ege Ekspres in 1958 (both in İzmir), and in the late 1960s in Kuvayi Milliye, a monthly veterans’ magazine published in Mersin. Their authors were ordinary insofar as they were relatively low ranking clerks, former reserve officers, and readers of the İzmir papers. As literate Muslim males able to pen their own memories, however, they certainly held a certain degree of privilege over less educated and illiterate people, women and non-Muslims. In order to analyse their narratives, I use concepts developed by Maurice Halbwachs [Halbwachs, M., 1992 (1939) On Collective Memory: Edited, Translated, and with an Introduction by Lewis A. Coser. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, collective memory] and Jan and Aleida Assmann [Assmann, A., and Assmann, J. 1994. Das Gestern im heute. Medien und soziales Gedächtnis. In: K. Merten, S. J. Schmidt and S. Weischenberg, eds. Die Wirklichkeit der Medien: Eine Einführung in die Kommunikationswissenschaft. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 114–140.]. The loss of Ottoman sovereignty also brought about that of Muslim supremacy, which privileged Ottoman Muslims experienced as a massive threat for themselves. As I show throughout, all the stories recount experiences of humiliation and distress that resulted from the reversal of social roles under occupation: Being Muslim was no longer an advantage or even a privilege: the privileged had become ordinary. Memory was gradually securalised, and the use of allusions facilitated forgetting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When Edwin Chadwick released his report into burial reform in 1843 he was highly critical of the working-class practice of keeping the dead body in the home for up to a week in the period between death and burial. Chadwick argued that the English working-classes kept the body for so long for economic reasons and that as a result of living in close quarters with a corpse they picked up negative associations with death and suffered moral decline. This paper overturns this assumption by using evidence from nineteenth-century folklore collections and working-class autobiography to argue that the long-standing tradition of keeping the body in the home and rallying round to prepare it for burial held a deep significance for rural working-class people. The gradual preparation of the body for burial engaged the senses and centred on the visual appearance of the corpse enabling rural folk to confirm social bonds through the formation of collective memories, demonstrate the respectability of both the deceased and their family, accept the reality of death, and begin the mourning process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the mountain man as a historical icon that illuminates how settler memory reverberates in the Rocky Mountain West and helps construct regional expressions of conservative political identity. Kevin Bruyneel's analytic of settler memory describes a habitualized process of selective remembrance, 'forgetting,' and disavowal of settler-Indigenous relationships, where today's settlers benefit from legacies of dispossession, violence, and genocidal policies. Using Carbon County, Wyoming, as a case study, I analyze mountain man symbolism in two contemporary contexts: regional tourism marketing and mountain man rendezvous (MMR) reenactment gatherings. Both contexts elevate the mountain man as a symbol of resilience and noble identity. Just as the construct of whiteness has provided a psychological wage against socioeconomic deficits for many Americans, I argue, settler memory of the mountain man compensates for much that settlers experience but won't name, such as the role the U.S. state in removing Indigenous communities; the hardship of economic precarity in regions marked by boom-and-bust cycles and dependent on tourism; and the reality that government provides the greatest share of employment in the region. Adding mountain man symbolism to our understanding of settler memory expands scholars' understanding of settler colonialism's intertwinement with contemporary place-making and political identity construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies on colonial discourse have demonstrated that the speeches of freedom activists in colonial Africa served as sites of resistance. One key text type that has, however, been neglected in the critical literature on the discourse of emancipation is the national anthem of colonised states. To fill this gap, the present study examines the discursive enactment of resistance in the anthems of former British colonies in Africa, focusing on the transitivity framework in systemic functional linguistics. Semantic and structural parallelisms across the anthems are identified as evidence of a collective memory, a cultural trauma reconfigured and reconstituted to reclaim a positive identity and project a desirable postcolonial future. They also foreground the motif of freedom and legitimise the African as the owner of the reclaimed territory. These procedures articulate an anti-imperialist and anti-establishment stance that provides hope, strength and encouragement to an oppressed group. This paper extends the scholarship on the discursive enactment of resistance by focusing attention on a context underexplored in the literature. It also illustrates the (re)construction of relevant ideologies in national anthems to stimulate desirable, progressive attitudes among citizenry in African states. The paper is furthermore significant to decolonial research and highlights the role of language in political decolonisation processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

History education has been instrumental in transmitting collective memories across generations while sustaining national traditions. Many nations use history education to instill national memories in their future citizens. In the current Jewish context, history is arguably a dominant cultural discourse. History education is deemed central to preparing future Jewish citizens of Israel. In particular, Zionist scholars and educators use the Bible as their primary text, providing an infrastructure of history and myths for this national ideology. In order to investigate the relationship between political ideology, education, and national memories, this paper explores the ways in which the Hebrew Bible and Jewish history are being taught interchangeably in Jewish-Israeli schools. Drawing on various source materials (such as political videos, school curricula, and textbooks), the paper retraces the origins of this conflation, critically examines its goals, and suggests possible effects it may have on the formation of children's and adolescents' collective memories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines H-300 or Kiryat Eilon: a neighborhood in the city of Holon that exemplifies Mizrahi mobility into the new middle class. Following Cohen and Leon's seminal insights on the Mizrahi middle class, the paper analyses life stories and other daily practices of H-300 residents in order to assess their (ethno-)class identities. The picture seems to be far more complex than the one described by Leon and Cohen. Mobile Mizrahi personal experience and collective memory are indeed dominant but what they construct is not a "Mizrahi" ethno-class space but a more open and integrated "popular middle class" community. Mizrahi collective and individual experience serve as a "quarry" from which cultural building blocks are produced. The findings suggest the emergence of an all-Israeli "popular middle class" subject, distinct from the upper-middle-class layers, leading the popular classes echelons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the preliminary results of the 'Pandemic Diaries' research project, carried out by a 5-member team of Polish researchers under a form of open diary writing competition. Its aim was to gather a possibly widest body of personal accounts of the coronavirus pandemic experiences. Within it, 403 entries were submitted, providing a detailed insight into the daily practices, emotional and material difficulties of all age, gender and education-based groups of the Polish society. The paper presents initial observations on the dataset and the most often expressed notions that arise, including a widespread exacerbation of mental health issues as well as the process of defining the period of pandemic through references to collective memory and patriotic milieus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Photographies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Recent years have seen a series of anniversaries of iconic protests. This draws attention to social movements' long-term legacies both in terms of their impact on society at large as well as their influence on subsequent cycles of mobilization. The growing literature on the interconnections between memories and movements provides crucial insights into such legacies as it explores how movements are remembered or forgotten. The paper aims to contribute to this literature and our understanding of continuities and discontinuities between different cycles of mobilization. For this purpose, we explore how activists of a central strand of the German anti-austerity movement, Blockupy, remember the '68 movement. Based on interviews with Blockupy activists and a media analysis, the paper shows how Blockupy activists largely share a joint memory of '68 despite ideological and generational differences. This shared memory is characterized by recurrent patterns of mnemonic adoptions of some '68 traits and rejection of others. At the same time, we reveal that this memory is only partly movement-specific as it overlaps with public memories in several respects. Activists however clearly reject public memories with respect to '68's central goals. The paper's findings show how impacts of past movements on later activism are shaped by activists' memories of that past and in particular by two levels of mnemonic rejection and adoption: how activists reject or adopt characteristics of a past movement and, in doing so, how they reject or adopt public memories of that movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay adds to previous research of Putinism an investigation of the political thought and foreign outlooks of Russia's Secretary of the Security Council Nikolai Patrushev and Head of the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Sergei Naryshkin, with a focus on their statements between 2006 to 2020. The paper outlines Patrushev's and Naryshkin's thoughts regarding the United States, Ukraine, and the idea of multipolarity/polycentrism. We then introduce Patrushev's critique of liberal values and color revolutions, and Naryshkin's statements on the memory of World War II and Western institutions. The salience of these altogether seven topics is interpreted with reference to three classical topoi in Russian political thought: the Slavophile vs. Westerners controversy, the single-stream theory, and the civilizational paradigm. Our conclusions inform the ongoing debate on whether to conceptualize Putinism as either an ideology or a mentality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper brings together the literature on far right parties, medievalism and opinion leadership in order to more closely interrogate the memory politics of the far right. We address two broad questions: what does the mobilization of distant-past events do in far right discourse? And how do these memories circulate online? We unpack one specific case study: the mobilization of the topic 'La Reconquista' (The Reconquest) among the computer-mediated networks of one Europe's newest national-populist parties: Spain's VOX. First, we show three strategies through which the Reconquest trope reproduced a conservative historiography that creates a transhistorical, exclusionary and Catholic Spanish nation: the creation of memory sites, the glorification of heroes and a specifically antagonistic memory. Second, we show that the one-word nature of the historical narrative, through its Twitter circulation, gave it a crucial ability to mobilize in the context of an election. Finally, drawing from opinion leader theory we show how these Reconquest narratives were put forward by traditional elite actors such as political parties and newspapers, but relied on the role of ordinary citizens to spread and circulate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates secular bio-icons' political revitalization, illustrating their application as critical interventions into contemporary political struggles in the Middle East. To elucidate this phenomenon, we introduce the concept politics of revitalization to address how memory entrepreneurs can manage the past in ways that legitimize their involvement in particular visions of the future, thereby holding the potential to consolidate the position of political elites in power. Based on an analysis of three secular bio-icons: Jamila Bouhired, Leila Khaled and Hilarion Capucci, we argue that the mobilizing, resistive and aspirational potential of secular bio-icons can be utilized strategically by political actors to boost and legitimize existing (and widely contested) regimes or ideological beliefs by anchoring them in mediated renditions of historical narratives. We hold that secular bio-icons' political application constitutes a distinct social technique applied by Iran, Syria and Hizbollah to (re)activate nostalgic collective memories, pointing towards particular futures in which they entrench their political status and undermine opposing actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Arthur C. Danto's distinction between monuments and memorials proposes a differentiation between two ideologically-determined modes of commemoration, encompassing not just architectural symbols of the past but also all other forms of cultural 'remembering', including documentary, literary, and cinematic forms of representation. My discussion will focus on a photographic album significantly entitled The Last Good War and the transhistorical depictions of the war veteran in the film Memorial Day. The purpose of this paper is to underscore the ideological ambivalences at the heart of the American Second World War veteran 'craze', which not only paved the way for overriding the post-Vietnam War cultural legacy, but also served to ethically and ideologically legitimize contemporary US military interventions in national (collective) memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My research highlights the complex relationship between narrative and temporality whilst exploring the narrative configuration of the Arab revolution. My paper situates the memoirs of Libyan novelist Hisham Matar's The Return and Egyptian novelist Ahdaf Soueif's Cairo: My City, Our Revolution, and their first-hand experience of the revolution in Libya and Egypt within the genre of memory and writing. The stated work is investigated to emphasize how both writers configure the immediate, historical, social, and political dimensions of the revolution. By transcribing the time of revolution into narratives, both writers attempt to preserve a watershed moment of the Arab history and portray collective as well as individual memory. I argue that through their acts of witnessing/writing/remembering, not only do these writers historicize the present but also produce narrative memory by articulating collective utterances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Watergate, this article synthesizes the cross-disciplinary scholarly literature on the role journalism played in Nixon's fall from power. The paper describes prominent myths about Woodward and Bernstein's Washington Post articles, Deep Throat, and the simplified narrative that presumes the press toppled Nixon. Subsequently, we explain why Watergate remains an important story for journalism, noting how it pushed investigative journalism toward a more adversarial posture that, at its best, emphasized its role as a watchdog of the moral order. The paper also discusses Watergate's significance as a comparative framework for other instances of presidential abuse of power, how its place in historical memory is likely to change in light of transformative journalistic and political events, and directions for scholarly research on this seminal saga in American press history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the middle- and upper-class is typically cast as using museum patronage to support narratives that reinforce the position of dominant racial groups, this paper presents an alternative perspective. Drawing on ethnographic and archival data, I conceptually and empirically elaborate how gifts by black middle- and upper-class voluntary organizations to African American museums are enabled by racial uplift ideology and directed at nurturing counter-narratives about African Americans. As patrons of memory they aim to reconstitute recollections of African Americans by challenging master narratives of national life where they are either absent or marginalized. Gifts to black museums also support the inclusion of their own organizations and members as protagonists in this counter-memory. By turning attention to cultural patronage among black middle- and upper-class voluntary organizations, this paper demonstrates how museum patronage among elites can unsettle, rather than reinforce, master racial narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on an analysis of history textbooks and commemorative declarations on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the paper argues that the leadership of the unrecognized republics of Transnistria and Donbas has instrumentalized Holocaust remembrance to legitimize their regimes internally and externally. The use of the Holocaust in historical politics allowed the secessionist regimes to portray themselves as opponents of radical nationalism and representatives of the multi-ethnic population of Transnistria and Donbas. In external relations, the secessionist leaders have used Holocaust commemorations as a tool for self-positioning within international 'memory wars,' and as a channel for the consolidation of the 'civilized' image of unrecognized republics and the extension of international contacts. Despite a quite similar discourse on the Holocaust, the aims of the instrumentalization of the Holocaust in historical politics have differed in certain respects due to the dissimilar challenges faced by the Transnistrian and Donbas unrecognized republics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gobustan, a prehistoric site 60 km south of Baku, has an impressive collection of rock carvings from different prehistoric eras. Near the site, a national museum presents the prehistoric findings in a narrative that connects them with modern-day Azerbaijan, calling the hunter–gatherer tribes that lived in Gobustan 'our ancient Azerbaijani ancestors'. While many nation-building projects dig deep into the past, reconstruct it, claim ancient civilizations as their own and sometimes even invent historical narratives that never happened, the Gobustan Museum and the narrative it implies (that prehistoric people living in 15,000 BCE were Azerbaijanis) seems like 'overkill', an exaggerated effort to connect the past and the present. The data from the museum points to a larger story: the construction of national identity and collective memory in post-Soviet Azerbaijan. This paper presents some of the author's anthropological field research findings in the museum and explains why the narrative of 'ancientness' is so essential in post-Soviet Azerbaijan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Invented market traditions are practices and memories of the past created by corporations and sustained through consumption. Invented market traditions show how organisations have the potential to reorganise collective memories of the past, creating new mnemonic narratives rather than drawing on existing ones. Materiality provides long-term stability to these narratives. This paper focuses on the institution of Italian breakfast, based on milk, coffee, and convenience bakery products such as biscuits, invented by the brand Mulino Bianco. Biscuits exemplify how commodities imbued with nostalgic meanings can mobilise these invented memories and fold them into social practices. The recurring consumption of biscuits at breakfast, which was marketed as a rediscovery of Italian heritage, created those very nostalgic memories that consumers wanted to remember. Invented market traditions show the social repercussions of organisations' rhetorical work and expose how context plays a role in understanding their success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the prevalence of research in Holocaust memory and Holocaust education, the historical development of British Holocaust education remains understudied. This paper reconstructs this history, presenting Anglo-Jewish efforts to teach about the Holocaust in the 1970s for the first time and using the concept of ‘cosmopolitan memory’ to explain its proliferation in the early 1980s. This article argues that the origins of contemporary Holocaust education should not be found in the increase of its teaching with the National Curriculum of 1991 but in the changing culture of memory and history teaching in the late 1970s and early 1980s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In any post-disaster contexts, the affected societies will inevitably be involved in tensions between remembering and forgetting the past disaster experiences. They need to forget the disaster in order to return to their daily lives; at the same time, they also need to remember the disaster, which will usually involve canonization programs of the cultural memory of disaster. This study explores, how these programs, manifested in post-disaster monuments and commemorations, entail meaning contestations, through which the cultural interpretations of the disaster are formed and disputed. This paper uses the example of the Aceh Tsunami Museum in Indonesia as a part of a canonization program of the cultural memory of a tsunami. This museum was erected as a memorial to the success of the post tsunami reconstruction programs lead by the Indonesian government. While the monuments' managers have proposed certain narratives by which to remember the disaster, the visitors construct their interpretation of these through their daily practices. Hence, the shaping of the cultural memory of a disaster involves the social functions of the disaster monuments. For the locals, this museum has diverse functions: recreational, memorial, educational, and economic ones; however, the memory of the success of the post-tsunami reconstruction programs has been forgotten by the locals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will examine the self-styled public information comics Chronicle: The Archive and Museum Anthology and Archives and Memory, both published by the Scottish Centre for Comics Studies (SCCS) in 2018. The comics in question deal with notions of the archival in very different ways both conceptually and stylistically. The discussion will highlight the legal and social justice issues these comics raise while focusing on the complex relationship between archival materials and memory. It will additionally consider these in relation to the concept of public information comics and unpack what such comics do that goes beyond the mere communication of information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the significance of historical narratives on populism, the congruence between collective memory and scholarship regarding populism is scarce in Central and Eastern European countries. We address this gap by analysing the commemorative narratives of the competing populist right-wing political parties in Hungary and Poland promoted during celebrations for the Day of National Unity and National Independence Day celebration. The paper analyses the structure, content and functions of commemorative speeches to highlight the similarities and differences between the political actors under consideration. The findings reveal that victimisation and heroisation are constant and stable components of both countries' political narratives. Moreover, the elements of populist communication are articulated alongside nationalist themes emphasising the greatness of the nation, historical revisionism or national Catholicism. The references to the people using ethno-cultural and exclusionary terms are of particular significance. Although praised and credited with positive qualities, the Polish and Hungarian peoples are more frequently presented as victims of international enemies, European elites or internal, cultural and political elites. This victimhood status allows political actors to both represent themselves as advocates of the people and legitimises their claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Media history is still written largely from national perspectives so that the role of import and export, translations and franchises is seldom foregrounded. On geographically and linguistically limited markets, imported materials have nevertheless been crucial parts of popular print culture. This paper explores the market of 'sex edutainment' magazines in 1970s Finland, zooming specifically in on Leikki ('Play', 1976), a sex magazine for women translated from the Norwegian Lek (first launched in 1971) that provided knowledge on topics ranging from marriage to masturbation and lesbian desire. Through contextual analysis of Leikki, a marginal publication that has basically faded from popular memory, this article attends to ephemeral and even failed print media in order to account for the heterogeneity of the 1970s sex press market as it intermeshed with sex advice and education. In so doing, it adds new perspectives to a field largely focused on successful periodicals and addresses knowledge gaps resulting from the exclusion of the sex press from mainstream media historiography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to offer both an interpretation and a critique of the epistemological foundations underlying one of the most recent approaches to trauma studies: cultural trauma theory. After the First World War, the founding father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, inquired into whether his diagnostic of "traumatic neurosis" could shed light on how collectives deal with unsettling experiences and memories. Throughout the intervening decades, Freud´s insights into collective trauma have attracted the interest of scholars from various disciplines within the humanities and social sciences, from literary studies to historiography, memory studies, and, finally – the focus of this paper – cultural and social theory. By underlining the ways in which the proponents of cultural trauma theory – Jeffrey Alexander, Neil Smelzer, Piotr Sztompka, Bernhard Giesen, and Ron Eyerman – have reframed Freudian ideas regarding the transmission of legacies of collective suffering, the paper considers whether the notion of trauma can be extended to the analysis of cultures and societies. It explores the ambivalent relationship between psychoanalysis and contemporary cultural trauma theory to disclose the theoretical assumptions and weaknesses of the latter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking up the important work of other theorists of performance, social memory and the political in Africa and Latin America we restate the need for a re-configured understanding of how performance - and in particular forms of expressive art - impinges on the practice of politics and is in fact embedded within it. Memory as held in the body can be both replayed within, and can re-form, the present. Thus, history overlays but is also redrawn through acts of performance. This in its totality may well be a significant point of creative dissonance emanating from the Global South as communities and artists in societies under stress make new forms of commentary through performance, which hold within them the penumbra of the past. We draw together aspects of body, voice and performance as articulated in the papers in this cluster. While there is no single critical position, a constant point emerging is the need to reconfigure how moments of creativity, past and present, should to be reinserted in the broader ambit of both national and transnational understandings of how we configure history and the present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines two major rituals of contemporary national life in the UK: association football and military commemoration. It explores the ways in which remembering is enacted and performed within UK football and how these processes are related to issues of power, agency and identity in Britain today. Employing the concepts of collective memory and spectacle, this article argues that 'memory entrepreneurs' have sought to embed football as 'site of memory' in the performance of military commemoration. It concludes that this has contributed to the transformation of military commemoration, from a ritual that is observed to a spectacle that is consumed. This paper thus contributes to emergent debates on the militarization of civilian space, the shifting nature of civil–military relations in the twenty-first century, and the role of military remembrance in the reproduction of Britishness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the role of artistic memory in processes of redressing political violence and historical injustices. Combining philosophical reflection, insights from memory studies and examples of artistic practices, it focuses on how memory and imagination coalesce in problematising mass violence against women and resisting its 'official' oblivion. The argument is that artistic memory work can foster collective memories of the painful past in ways that overcome both individual and national representations. To this end, this paper aims to explore various contemporary art productions as new models of memorialization, which deal with the representation of violence against women in armed conflicts and under political repression. The academic literature on the role of art in processes of dealing with the past tends to examine literature, film, theatre, painting and other more traditional artistic media of commemorating the victims of mass violence. In contrast, this paper explores the political potentialities of new artistic models of memorialization, namely participatory and collaborative artistic practices. Unlike the traditional media, they can commemorate victims performatively and collaboratively, simultaneously catalysing transnational solidarity and new forms of politics 'from below.'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2011, the war in Syria has reshaped the lives of millions of Syrians with the displacement of over ten million people—more than half the population—inside and outside Syria, and the severe destruction of historical and modern cities and countryside. In Homs, the third largest city in Syria and the focus of this paper, entire neighbourhoods have been turned into rubble, destroying the familiar and reshaping the urban, social and cultural fabric of the city. However, despite this mass destruction and displacement, local architects, urbanists and residents are showing incredible levels of resilience; rehabilitating their partially damaged homes and providing shelter to the internally displaced population. Based on a series of interviews with architects and urbanists who remained in Syria, and with members of the Syrian diaspora, this paper explores the emerging relations between the urban past and present as citizens struggle to survive, to sustain lives and to envision a future. Memories of the pre-war Homs, and the surviving parts of the city, have become imagined and material places of refuge for many Homsis in the work of remembering, reflecting and seeking to reconstruct a vanished past—but also might be used to rethink the city, and to imagine its future. By engaging with Syrians, and narrating their stories in the time of war, this paper brings the element of human agency to the question of Syrian reconstruction; a dimension that too often is lost in studies of the Syrian crisis and of cities at war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social sustainability is an increasingly important aspect of urban development and renewal. Other than looking at preserving the greenery, ecosystems, and physical environment, urban scientists are also looking at ensuring the preservation of history, heritage, identity, and the memories of the people involved. With an increasing demand for public participation in the process of urban and heritage preservation, social sustainability cannot be achieved without the involvement of communities and individuals who are the "most ordinary everyday citizens." Hence, capturing the oral history accounts and personal narratives of these "most ordinary everyday citizens" becomes crucial in documenting life and the collective or social memory of a place. In Singapore, Kampong Lorong Buangkok is the last remaining village or kampong on the mainland. Under the current Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) Masterplan 2019, the kampong is expected to give way to a 3-lane bi-directional highway, 2 schools (primary and secondary), and a public park. This paper provides a glimpse into the broad themes drawn from the oral history accounts and personal narratives documented from the residents living in the kampong, as part of a project to capture the rich history and heritage about the kampong and its residents, in a bid to "preserve" the kampong as urbanization and gentrification are imminent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historically, researchers have studied commemorative events primarily for their political role in the (re)construction of contested national collective memories and identities, but globalisation, social justice movements, multiculturalism and regionalism forces are further transforming commemorative practices in the 21st century. This study adopts the semiotic paradigm to deconstruct commemorative narratives communicated during major anniversary celebrations of the fall of the Berlin Wall. In doing so, this paper evidences how interwoven signs in these commemorative events construct multi-layered narratives of transnational collective memory and identity based on shared values that transcend the political boundaries of the nation. The study further showcases how shifting political contexts influence commemorative narratives, whilst at the same time commemorative events may increasingly be designed to appeal to a broader, global audience as leisure phenomena of transnational significance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cultural heritage is an integral part of a people's identity, both for future generations and for preservation of historical memory and cultural development. In the face of the aggression of the Russian Federation, preservation of Ukraine's cultural heritage requires the joint efforts of national and international organisations, scientists and cultural experts. The paper compares the loss and damage brought about by Russia's war on Ukraine since 2014 to the loss and damage inflicted by Germany during World War II. Both aggressors have inflicted serious damage with large-scale theft and looting of cultural values on the territory of Ukraine, destroying architectural monuments, museums and libraries, with the aim of erasing national awareness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As far back as Theodore Roosevelt or Owen Wister and his novel of western grit and masculinity, The Virginian, the American West has been charged with an evocative sense: as virtue, as place, as image. In this paper, I argue that the image, as place and virtue, is exhibited in video games through a built environment that contains the ideas and meaning of the 'Old West' and the imagined past, in what I refer to as aged icons. The nostalgia of the American West has been built into the American psyche and is represented in film, T.V., novels, toys, amusement parks, and generalised game play. While digital games are a relative newcomer and their imagery is derivative, their immersive nature allows players the opportunity to explore and live within a world that revels in its own disintegration. The built environment and its contents in the digital play space are shown as having aged themselves – they are falling apart, dilapidated, or contain the death and destruction of a lost era. The aged icon references the buildings and objects within those structures as reinforcing and authenticating a distant and figural past that comports with a broader cultural memory of the 'Old West.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite being the most tangibly impacted by the first-order effects of a warming climate, much of Australia's agricultural regions have remained relatively conservative in their views on climate change and the need for adaptation. This paper aims to understand how the experience of an extreme climate event like the 2017–2020 drought might shift opinions and values on these issues within agricultural communities. Through in-depth interviews with 20 graziers across Northwest NSW during the worst days of the drought, we found that various psychological lock-ins, historical memories of resilience, and local cultural values appeared to be undermining the perception of their vulnerability, while enhancing perceptions of their ability to endure. Such discursive constructions appear to explain why a jarring climatic event like the 2017–2020 drought was failing to produce a noticeable shift in their views. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Promoted by the peace process between the Santos administration (2010–2018) and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, which resulted in the signing of a peace accord in November 2016, peace education at Colombia's higher education establishments and schools is gaining momentum. Educators have seized upon the opportunity afforded by the peace process and the associated legislation, particularly Law 1448 (2011) on victims and Law 1732 (2014) on the Peace Chair (Cátedra de la Paz), to energise peace education. Yet this is proving to be difficult. Among the challenges are the persistence of high levels of political, criminal and other types of violence following the termination of the armed conflict affecting learners' attitudes, behaviours and values; little relevance for peace education of established education in ethics and democratic citizenship competences; limited concrete knowledge on tertiary peace education as a pedagogical field; a vague legal framework; and little institutional guidance. Based on the author's first-hand experience as a conflict analyst and university lecturer in Colombia and a discussion of the 'conventional' and 'critical' orientations of peace education, this paper addresses these challenges and presents ideas on how tertiary peace education in Colombia could be enhanced through a focus on historical memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following Bal’s narratology, underlaid by participant observation, and complemented by interviews, this paper provides a cultural analysis of the permanent exhibition of the Schindler Factory Museum which opened in 2010 in Krakow, Poland. The paper points to current heritage making processes in connection to both the communist period and World War II (WWII) in Poland. The paper suggests that despite an apparent focus on WWII, the exhibition narrative may, albeit indirectly, address the history written under communism and its protracted collective memory. Such an analysis offers a case to investigate cultural heritage as participating and reflecting dynamics between history writing and memory in contemporary Poland between local, national and transcultural memory making processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The protracted armed conflict in Sri Lanka (1983–2009) has had a significant impact on the social fabric of the country. The Tamil community – the women especially – bore the brunt of the traumatic spill-over of decades of warfare that brutalised all areas of life, especially in the North. With the belief that narrative literature on war captures the complex ways in which gender, war, and peace interact and impact configurations of the female gender in turbulent war-torn and post-war societies, this paper critically reads Rohini Mohan's The Seasons of Trouble (2014), a non-fiction narrative of the life stories of three individuals that lay claim to 'truth' and therefore is placed in a strong position in relation to collective memory, archive, and history. The critical content analysis from a feminist theoretical standpoint conveys how the trajectories of Tamil women caught in Sri Lanka's war shine a light on the ways in which dominant configurations of war and peace construct the female gender identity in specific ways and thereby shape the way women are framed in war-torn and post-war societies with tangible implications on the lived realities of Tamil women in Sri Lanka. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few figures vivify the struggle over public memory and survival as compellingly as second wave feminist Andrea Dworkin, who was a visionary and gadfly within the movement. This analysis provides an interior view of this public and often misunderstood figure as it advances a theory of archival resilience. Acting as a historical corrective, archival resilience emboldens the marginalized to interrupt the cohesive hegemonic imaginary to which they have been subjected and be active agents in producing a parallel historico-political reality through the preservation of records that center their voices and experiences on their own terms. Following Dworkin, archival resilience creates a record of marginalized lives through the 1) strategic, defiant act of valuing the self and one's community in the service of record preservation despite a hostile, disconfirming culture; 2) documentation of the multifaceted nature of survival and survival strategies used by the marginalized to illuminate the precarity of their lives; and 3) rejection of celebratory or politically "respectable" representations in favor of preserving the full picture of people and movements, even those aspects that are stigmatized or anti-heroic. Archival resilience creates a record of marginalized lives so that we can gain an appreciation of their struggle, worth, and value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Western modernity has shaped people's thought patterns and value hierarchies, relegating humans to the position of supremacy. This anthropocentric worldview has disconnected humans from the rest of nature and eventually led to the social and ecological catastrophe. This paper shows that collective memory work can help us recognize how we are always socialized within and by human communities and also already ecosocialized within and by the rest of nature. The motivation to use the ecosocialization framework to analyze childhood memories comes from our wish to problematize the anthropocentric view of life further and resituate childhood and growing up beyond exclusively social and human contexts. We draw on the memories collected in the Re-Connect / Re-Collect: Crossing the Divides through Memories of Cold War Childhoods project (2019–2021). We "think with theory" to reveal traces of ecosocialization present in childhood memories. On this basis, we suggest that including multisensory awareness practices in memory workshops to recognize our bodily belonging—as participants create their memory stories bringing into focus relations with more-than-humans—could potentialize collective biography as a form of transformative ecosocial education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the work of black feminist performance artist and scholar Gabrielle Civil as a mode of transhistorical historiography. By working from Civil's artistic aim to open up space and her commitment to breaking the frames of identity, history, and art, the paper explores how textual and temporal slippages cultivate an embodied polyphonic practice responding to individual and collective histories and senses of belonging. With specific regard for transnational and diasporic identities and experiences, Civil's work addresses three different relationships between oneself and others: familial, (re)imagined familial, and ancestral bloodlines. The resulting dynamic enacts a "collaborative timeslip" as a means with which to address racist and patriarchal histographies and transgenerational trauma and memories. This approach allows for layering asynchronistic local and global perspectives to elicit calls for and demonstrations of protest and joy. Drawing from interdisciplinary, performance, and African diaspora scholars such as Avery F. Gordon, Long Le-Khac, Kara Keeling, Tina M. Campt, Nadège T. Clitandre, and Jack Isaac Pryor, the article primarily examines Civil's Fugue (Da Montréal) (2014) performance and debut full-length collection Swallow the Fish (2017). Extending beyond medium and genre, the collaborative timeslip perpetually enacts an oscillation of Civil's experiments: truth telling, creating, inviting someone in, documenting, and repeating. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Significant socio-cultural and political changes have taken place in Sri Lanka since the end of the most recent war in 2009. There is, however, a lack of research on minority youth sub-cultures in Sri Lanka. This paper seeks to fill the gap, describing different elements of Tamil youth sub-cultures and identifying factors which can be used to distinguish them. The research aimed to explore emerging youth sub-cultures, considering Somasundaram's idea of collective trauma and Hall's concept of resistance: which are combined with other broad theoretical conceptualizations and synthesized as resistance, intersectionality and identity, as a lens to understand the sub-cultures among Jaffna post-war youth. Ethnographic approaches are used to understand Tamil youth phenomena, with interviews and focus group discussions among youths and professionals. Seven youth sub-cultures in which war trauma is a predominant factor are identified. The results suggest that in-depth studies of all youth sub-cultures are needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on coexistence and urban diversity (notably in the United Kingdom, Australia, Malaysia and Singapore) has demonstrated the ways individuals of diverse backgrounds routinely manage differences and interact meaningfully in multicultural societies, drawing on shared cultural knowledge and habits. This paper argues for a deeper exploration of societies where intercultural know-how is more limited and the capacity to negotiate difference has not been inculcated. This description fits several Southeast Asian societies wherein the politics of majority-minority is a dominant feature. This article investigates the possibilities of familiarity and friendship in a multiethnic town in southern Laos where the predominant ideology towards cultural diversity has been one of assimilation. In doing so, the paper reveals ways of creating a sense of belonging and community other than the practices of cultural accommodation. These processes draw on competences and dispositions which individuals have acquired through their mobility, producing a sense of togetherness, albeit contingent and fragmented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 100th anniversary of the Finnish Civil War has made questions about the construction of its heritage and cultural memory topical. Taking the concept of dissonant heritage as a starting point, the paper looks at two monuments in the City of Tampere and their reception and landscape, focusing on recent decades. War monuments are always understood within the framework of current politics, but they are also in continuous dialogue with their physical surroundings and, thus, shape and are shaped by their landscape. In this paper, we look at the statues as arenas for politics of history and cultural memory, and the changes and continuums they carry with them. Monuments are at the core of urban public space and the processes of placemaking. Even when they are distanced from the historical events, they represent and remind us of the historical and political nature of public space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores social memory as a dynamic, agentive and semiotically mediated process drawing on some key principles from Vygotsky's and Halliday's work. These authors' basic principles are defined and later applied to the analysis of the transmission of contested memories of the recent past in Uruguay. The paper concludes by reflecting on how this dialectical, historical and semiotic approach to investigating complex phenomena provide a unique lens to understanding social memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the removal of the statues of General Robert E. Lee, General P. G. T. Beauregard, and Jefferson Davis in New Orleans as an illustration of a highly racialized strain of urban fallism: fallism pitting the proponents of diversity and inclusion against conservative, often white nationalist sympathisers. It argues that urban fallism in the context of New Orleans is a social movement driven by grassroots activists seeking the elimination of prominent monuments to white supremacy from the city's streets. This movement is working within a long tradition of political critique of 'Lost Cause' ideology, reaching back to the myth's inception in the late 19th century. The fallism that occurred on the streets of New Orleans in 2017, albeit made legal via formal channels, was made possible because of community activists who not only raised public awareness about the historical significance of the monuments but also refused to quarantine the statues in the past. The controversy speaks directly to the legacy of slavery and white supremacy in the United States, a legacy thrown into relief with the 2016 U.S. election and the reassertion of white nationalist politics and policy under the Trump administration. So what meanings do these statues hold now that white nationalism is in the headlines and the nation is divided between conservatives and progressives, echoing Civil War-era and Civil Rights-era politics? This paper uses public debate and street protest surrounding monument removal to explore the relationship between urban fallism, historical memory, and contemporary racial politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In March 2015, an activist movement 'Rhodes must fall' from the University of Cape Town initiated a new form of global socio-political protest, which spread in cities worldwide and was characterized by spatial practices of occupying, modifying and pulling down monuments in public space. Presenting key theoretic points of this special feature in City, this introduction explores the phenomenon of 'urban fallism'–the ways in which the action of contesting, transforming and/or removing a monument from urban space operates as a means of political struggle and as a form of political engagement in urban contexts. It outlines and integrates the contributions to this special feature, which covers a range of historic and contemporary cases in different urban, geographic and socio-political contexts, including: post-colonialism in Africa and the Americas; post-communism and post-imperialism in Europe and Asia; and wars in the Middle East. Drawing on original research and analyses from the fields of archaeology, history, art history, heritage studies, architecture, urban design, and sociology, the papers in this special feature highlight how the fall of monuments operates as a tool for political resistance against marginalization, discrimination and exclusion, a catalyst for democracy and social justice, and a means of dealing with contested heritage. As such, contributions of this special feature speak about the urban politics of race and identity and raise questions about the role of collective memory in the struggle of opposing and/or marginalized social groups for their right to the city and their place and recognition in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Social & Cultural Geography is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)