Chapter 32 - Collective Memory

Summary

Collective memory is an obvious and important topic for socio-cultural psychology to consider, but it has received scant attention to date, largely because it has been so little conceptualized. The oppositions explored in the sections that follow are: strong vs. distributed accounts of collective memory, collective versus individual memory, history versus memory, and specific narratives versus schematic narrative templates. The notion of mediation runs throughout the discussions of these oppositions and provides a way to draw together the various threads of the discussion of collective memory. The centrality of narratives and other forms of linguistic mediation in a distributed version of collective remembering has several implications. The study of collective and individual remembering differs greatly in terms of the disciplines involved, the methods employed, and the findings accumulated. The chapter also discusses the opposition between history and collective Memory, an issue that involves different orientations toward identity claims.