Memory work

Abstract: This article discusses the symbiotic, though uneven, relationship linking scholarship on journalism and memory. Though work on collective memory has yet to recognize the centrality of journalism as an institution of mnemonic record, memory creeps into journalistic relay so often that it renders journalism's memory work both widespread and multi-faceted. This renders journalism a key agent of memory work, even if journalists themselves are averse to admitting it as part of what they do and even if memory scholars have not yet given journalism its due.

Abstract: This essay focuses on re-enactments of the past through performances of memory both in and with visual media, and looks at how these may embody, express, work through, and even unpick, interconnections between the private, the public and the personal. It explores some questions around visual media/visual discourses, memory and collective identity by looking at filmic and photographic examples from England, Scotland, Canada and China. It also raises some questions around appropriate research methodologies and about how institutions such as museums and archives may figure in some of these collective activities, practices and performances.

Abstract: The Zapatistas and Sandinistas both invoked historical figures in their rhetoric, but they did so in very different ways. This variation is explained by a model of path‐dependent memory work that is sensitive to how previous memory struggles enable and constrain subsequent uses of historical figures. Specifically, previous struggles produce distinct reputational trajectories that condition the potential utility of different modes of memory work. The cases illustrate two reputational trajectories, which are situated within a broader field of mnemonic possibilities. This article offers a provisional baseline for comparing contested memory projects and supplies a framework for analyzing the opportunities and constraints by which reputational trajectories condition memory work. It builds on a recent processual emphasis in the collective memory literature and suggests that the contentious politics literature needs to historicize its conception of culture and take seriously the operation of constraints on symbo...

Abstract: What is the symbolic impact of the Vietnam War Memorial? How does television change our engagement with the past? Can the efforts to wipe out Communist legacies succeed? Should victims of the Holocaust be celebrated as heroes or as martyrs? These questions have a great deal in common, yet they are typically asked separately by people working in distinct research areas in different disciplines. "Frames of Remembrance" shares ideas and concerns across such divides. Irwin-Zarecka writes in clear, trenchant prose, inviting interdisciplinary exchanges. She journeys through a widely ranging empirical terrain, allowing students of collective memory to explore the emergent links and bridges. Working through a selection of analytically challenging questions, she opens new passages of inquiry. The results should prove a treasure trove for experienced researchers and newcomers alike. The first part of the book sets the analytical parameters of the study. The second section reflects on how the past becomes relevant to people in smaller as well as larger communities. The final chapters focus on the practices and practitioners of memory work itself. Included is a select, critically annotated bibliography that, with the range of works listed, shows that the study of collective memory is rapidly gaining a place in the history of past and present. By placing questions about the dynamics of collective remembrance--and forgetting--at the center of our efforts to understand human affairs, this book is a bold undertaking indeed. Yet at a time when the future of whole regions, from Eastern Europe to South Africa, from the Middle East to North America, may well depend on how people deal with the past, this call to serious analytical attention needs to be heard. This book will be of keen interest to historians, sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, and professionals in communications studies.