The memory policies constitute an interesting scope of analysis when we are investigating individual and collective memory. Different government regimes, authoritarian or not (sometimes even in democracies), have for decades been reinforcing or even building memories aligned with their ideological goals. However, due to the panoply of approaches in the scope of social memory, which authors are essential in an investigation about the relationship between memory policies and individual and collective memory?
Thank you very much for your suggestion. The hyperlink you suggested has very interesting points, but I had some difficulty finding association with the theme of memory or social memory.
About the politics of memory in France, Johann Michel states that:
"Le constant dressé par Pierre Nora au milieu des années 1980 d'une France en proie à une "boulimie mémorielle" n'a rien perdu de son acuité depouis l'avènement du troisième millénaire. Rares son les jours qui ne sont ponctués d'une injonction au souvenir d'un homme (ou d'une femme), d'un événement, d'un group social. Les commémorations sécularisées ont remplancé, dans le temps calendaire, la célébration des saints. La société française n'est pas sortie de l'ère commémorative. (Gouverner les mémoires. Les politiques mémorielles en France, by Johann Michel)."
When Johann Michel points out, "The French society did not emerge from the commemorative era", we have to ask ourselves what contemporary society does not share the same scenario in the realm of memory commemorations. What examples of memory politics can be cited as a reference? Are we not all in the limbo between secular commemorations and calendar times? That is a good point for reflection.
Dear Rooney,
As a Ph.D. social anthropologist who focuses on cultural survival and human rights/democratization, I can understand why you might find it difficult to find reliable scholarship in this area. In my field of anthropology, this idea of "politics of memory" is one of the many slogans that leads scholars down paths of cocktail party discussions without a firm basis in the practicality of either how memory works (which is cognitive psychology), how culture change and social change work (which are social science questions on change), how to measure sustainability and cultural survival (which can become legal questions as well as multi-disciplinary measures) and how to memorialize cultural and environmental artifacts as part of community education (memorialization and preservation are really tools of public education and awareness as well as behavioral change, which is part of "social marketing" and "behavior change"). So, the material you really want depends on whether you are part of just a philosophical discussion or whether you are part of practical action on teaching history and using the natural and human environment as a part of public education on values like tolerance, sustainability and cultural survival. Here are a couple of pieces of mine that are on my ResearchGate page in which you can see the approaches that I have taken in public education, discussion and protection directly on the natural and human landscape.
“Taking History Back to the People: An Approach to Making History Popular, Relevant and
Intellectual,” Democracy and Education, Volume 21, Issue 2, Article 1, Fall 2013.
and
“A New Approach to Heritage Tourism in Southeast Asia: Why it is so Difficult to Protect Cultures and Build Bridges in this Region,” Transcience, Volume 11, Issue 2, 2020.
Best,
David Lempert, Ph.D., J.D., M.B.A., E.D. (Hon.)
Founder and CEO, Unseen America Projects, Inc.
Founder and CEO, Southeast Asia Cultural and Environmental Heritage Protection Project
Thank you very much for your comments and reflections on the topic of my question and the complexity of research on social memory. Your comment brought together in a single answer a set of dilemmas that have arisen in my research and I have gradually shared in the RG through questions or discussions. I have the same concerns about the scientific quality of some works in this area and I will be careful not to repeat research mistakes. I agree that researching memory policies is not simple and it gets even more complicated if I don't define the scope of analysis. In the case of my research, I'm working with memory within the scope of 'memory of school time during the authoritarian regime in Portugal', which always leads me to History of Education, Sociology, Cognitive and Social Psychology and, in many cases, to Social Anthropology. I found the reading suggestions very interesting and I've already downloaded the articles. Again, thanks so much for the comment, it's been very helpful.
Best,
Rooney Pinto.
Just to reflect:
According to Johann Michel, "The notion of public memory is located in a sort of no-man's land, squeezed between collective memory and official memory (understood as a set of injunctions for collective remembering imposed by political authorities)." Article A Study of the Collective Memory and Public Memory of Slaver...
Which leads us to reflect on the social dynamics of memory in dialogue with the politics of memory, in particular on how an education of memory was established in schools through a political-social calendar of remembrance and dignifying history through national monuments ( built by the state).
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