Workshop 2
Anthropological
Perspectives on Social Memory
Convenors:
Helena Jerman,
University of Helsinki
Sharon Macdonald,
University of Sheffield
Petri Hautaniemi,
University of Helsinki
There is a renewed interest
among anthropologists in social
memory as culture.
Suggesting that social forms of culture shape
experience, power and
identity we welcome papers on how social
memory becomes enacted and
perceived. What does it imply for
individuals or various
social groups? How is memory experienced
and dealt with on a personal
level? Who has the “copyright“ to
memory and what role does
embodied experience play? What is
the relationship between
memory and emotion?
This session will also
explore how social memory provides a
platform on which
understandings of personal identities, history
and knowledge are contested
whether they are, for example,
reinvented, rejected or
accepted. Which are the processes of
social memory in specific
contexts? Is it possible to silence or
reconcile memory? As a
phenomenon social memory thus points
to a complex relationship
between embodied memory, history,
time, and space. This
supports the idea that any (cultural) identity
is constructed by multiple
agents in varying contexts.
Anthropological studies
have shown that social practices through
which persons enact their
memories combine elements between
history and memory as
communication between the past,
present and future. In what
ways do these elements of history
and memory interact?
Anthropology has argued for a long time
that the main sites of
historical consciousness are rituals, oral
history and place. What
other sites are there?
One of the missions of this
workshop is to explore what is distinctive
about anthropological
perspectives on memory. Methodological
and conceptual issues are
central in this respect.
The Abuses of Memory
David Berliner, Free
University of Brussels
The Creation and
Maintenance of a Social Memory of Violent
Antagonism among Basque
Radical Nationalists
Tormod Sund, University of
Tromsø
A Group of Gambian
Elderly and their Friendly Recollections
about Late Colonial
Times
Alice Bellagamba,
Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale, Vercelli
Memory as Moral Vision.
Syrian Christians in Turkey and
Germany
Heidi Armbruster,
University of Southampton
The Art of Remembering
and Forgetting in the Social Make-up
of a Greek Island
Elia Vardaki, University of
Ioannina
The Perception and
Preservation of Historic Monuments as a
Reflection of Social
Memory
Barbara Bossak, University
of Warsaw
Bolęcin. The Myth
and the Body
Tomasz Rakowski, University
of Warsaw
Ethnography, Art and
Death
Andrew Irving, University
College London and Royal Free Hospital