Social Memory: New Perspectives on the Past - Couverture souple

Wickham, Chris ; Fentress, James J.

9781597406710: Social Memory: New Perspectives on the Past

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1597406716 ISBN 13 : 9781597406710

Editeur : ACLS Humanities E-Book, 2008

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Social Memory: New Perspectives on the Past

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Quatri�me de couverture

In this book, an anthropologist and an historian investigate the role of memory in the interpretation and reconstruction of the past. Variation and change in historical legends, fairy tales and myths, in the writing of history itself, reflect moral and political points of view that are distinctive of time and place. Equally revealing are the things different groups choose to commemorate: in the Cevenne region of southern France, popular consciousness is still structured by memories of the Camisard wars of the eighteenth century, while perceptions of the recent past among the miners of Yorkshire and South Wales are structured by the memory of the strikes in the 1970s and 1980s, in turn mediated by the memories and tales of earlier struggles. The authors contrast local and national memory and consider how far each may be consciously constructed or manipulated for ideological or political ends.

Ranging from the writings of the Grimm brothers to Gregory of Tours, from accounts of the career of Charlemagne and the Icelandic sagas to the uses of the past in sub–Saharan Africa and among the Sicilian mafia, the authors examine the powerful workings of memory. Conformation to the facts is shown frequently to be less relevant than the needs of different communities to validate belief and to justify the present. The operation of social memory is above all creative: understanding how this is so, as this book ably demonstrates, provides considerable insights on human culture and society now and in the past.

Revue de presse

"... this interesting and lively book demonstrates the important social place of memory. It sustains the argument that transmission and diffusion of memories cannot simply be dismissed as ideological or untrue, but that we must enter into dialogue with memory, examine its arguments and test its various claims." The Australian Journal of Anthropology

"This is an accessible and attractive introduction to the study of the social production of historical memories. It deserves a prominent place on all reading–lists on ′anthropology and history.′" Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford

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