Remembering Communism examines the formation and transformation of the memory of communism in the post-communist period. The majority of the articles focus on memory practices in the post-Stalinist ...era in Bulgaria and Romania, with occasional references to the cases of Poland and the GDR. Based on an interdisciplinary approach, including history, anthropology, cultural studies and sociology, the volume examines the mechanisms and processes that influence, determine and mint the private and public memory of communism in the post-1989 era. The common denominator to all essays is the emphasis on the process of remembering in the present, and the modalities by means of which the present perspective shapes processes of remembering, including practices of commemoration and representation of the past.
Cold war cultures Vowinckel, Annette; Payk, Marcus M; Lindenberger, Thomas
2012., 20120315, 2012, 2012-03-15
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The Cold War was not only about the imperial ambitions of the super powers, their military strategies, and antagonistic ideologies. It was also about conflicting worldviews and their correlates in ...the daily life of the societies involved. The term "Cold War Culture" is often used in a broad sense to describe media influences, social practices, and symbolic representations as they shape, and are shaped by, international relations. Yet, it remains in question whether - or to what extent - the Cold War Culture model can be applied to European societies, both in the East and the West. While every European country had to adapt to the constraints imposed by the Cold War, individual development was affected by specific conditions as detailed in these chapters. This volume offers an important contribution to the international debate on this issue of the Cold War impact on everyday life by providing a better understanding of its history and legacy in Eastern and Western Europe.
Memorylands is an original and fascinating investigation of the nature of heritage, memory and understandings of the past in Europe today. It looks at how Europe has become a 'memoryland' - littered ...with material reminders of the past, such as museums, heritage sites and memorials; and at how this 'memory phenomenon' is related to the changing nature of identities - especially European, national and cosmopolitan. In doing so, it provides new insights into how memory and the past are being performed and reconfigured in Europe - and with what effects.
Drawing especially, though not exclusively, on cases, concepts and arguments from social and cultural anthropology, Memorylands argues for a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the cultural assumptions involved in relating to the past. It theorizes the various ways in which 'materializations' of identity work and relates these to different forms of identification within Europe. The book also addresses questions of methodology, including discussion of historical, ethnographic, interdisciplinary and innovative methods. Through a wide-range of case-studies from across Europe, Sharon Macdonald argues that Europe is home to a much greater range of ways of making the past present than is usually realized - and a greater range of forms of 'historical consciousness'. At the same time, however, she seeks to highlight what she calls 'the European memory complex' - a repertoire of prevalent patterns in forms of recollection and 'past presencing'.
The examples in Memorylands are drawn from both the margins and metropolitan centres, from the relatively small-scale and local, the national and the avant-garde. The book looks at pasts that are potentially identity-disrupting - or 'difficult' - as well as those that affirm identities or offer possibilities for transcending national identities or articulating more cosmopolitan futures. Topics covered include authenticity, temporalities,
Uprooted Thum, Gregor
2011., 20110808, 2011, 2011-08-08, 20110101
eBook
With the stroke of a pen at the Potsdam Conference following the Allied victory in 1945, Breslau, the largest German city east of Berlin, became the Polish city of Wroclaw. Its more than six hundred ...thousand inhabitants--almost all of them ethnic Germans--were expelled and replaced by Polish settlers from all parts of prewar Poland. Uprooted examines the long-term psychological and cultural consequences of forced migration in twentieth-century Europe through the experiences of Wroclaw's Polish inhabitants.
Abstract This article accounts for the partial result of the memory workshops implemented by black communities of the inter-Andean valley of the Patía River (Colombia) in their research, recovery, ...and revitalization of cultural traditions in the region process. The first three sections present a brief conceptual development on the role of collective memory as a re-existence device and a contextualization of the emergence of the recovery process of cultural traditions in the communities described. In close relationship with the previous ones, the fourth section offers development on the meaning and symbolic value of the narrations sung and prayed as forms that particularize how communities relate to the sacred and face spirituality and religiosity. Memorias Obstinadas o de la Obstinación de las Memorias Si bien se encuentran diferentes y valiosas formas de sustentar y acoger el tema de la memoria, asumimos aquí algunos desarrollos provenientes de la antropología, la sociología, la historia y los estudios culturales, como unidades de análisis que permiten situar conceptualmente la problemática que nos ocupa.
This book is a fascinating study of the Vietnamese experience and memory of the Vietnam War through the lens of popular imaginings about the wandering souls of the war dead. These ghosts of war play ...an important part in postwar Vietnamese historical narrative and imagination, and Heonik Kwon explores the intimate ritual ties with these unsettled identities which still survive in Vietnam today as well as the actions of those who hope to liberate these hidden but vital historical presences from their uprooted social existence. Taking a unique approach to the cultural history of war, he introduces gripping stories about spirits claiming social justice and about his own efforts to wrestle with the physical and spiritual presence of ghosts. Although these actions are fantastical, this book shows how examining their stories can illuminate critical issues of war and collective memory in Vietnam and the modern world more generally.
Se revisan y sintetizan 10 estudios de recuerdo libre sobre memoria colectiva en América Latina, Europa y Palestina. Prevalecen la política, la violencia colectiva y la guerra, si bien alrededor del ...50% de los acontecimientos fueron valorados positivamente, desconfirmando un sesgo negativo en la memoria colectiva. Sin embargo, en Palestina los eventos mayormente recordados fueron total o parcialmente negativos, reflejando su situación conflictiva. Se confirma un socio-centrismo parcial: en América Latina y Palestina la mayoría de los acontecimientos fueron nacionales. Un meta-análisis confirma un efecto generacional en 24/100 acontecimientos. Los eventos negativos se asociaron a bajo bienestar social en Palestina. Los resultados se discuten en el marco de los procesos de memoria colectiva y las representaciones sociales de la historia.
