Collective Memory

The study of collective memory is relatively new and interdisciplinary. The term collective memory is used to refer to several related things: the process whereby groups solidify individual memories into a shared narrative; the content of such stories; or the material culture associated with such narratives, such as monuments and memorials. The relationship changes between history and memory. The modern view had been to see the two as opposites until scholars began analyzing history and memory as mutually influencing. Collective memory is important to groups because it provides a sense of identity and unifies group members. Conversely, it can also be used to sustain hegemonic power.

Keywords: Collective Memory; Collective Remembering; Heritage; Historiography; Imagined Communities; Institutions; Official Memory; Vernacular Memory

Overview

The study of collective memory was pioneered by Maurice Halbwachs, who in a series of essays and books written between 1925 and 1950 explored the relationship between individual memory and the memory of groups. Halbwachs grounded his theories of memory on the earlier work of Emile Durkheim, one of sociology's founders. Durkheim explored how collective rituals unify a society. This exploration of group unity based on common rituals and symbols provided the basis for Halbwachs' theories of the nature and functions of group memories. Halbwachs' work has gradually risen in prominence and since the 1980s there has been a surge of memory studies in many fields. The relative youth of collective memory as a field of study means that its definition, subject matter, and methods are in flux.

Defining Collective Memory

It is difficult to define collective memory because the concept is used in sociology, history, literary theory, anthropology, geography, political science and other disciplines, each of which puts its own particular spin on the definition. For example, Kammen (1997) says that the collective memory is "the publicly presented past: … speeches and sermons, editorials and school textbooks, museum exhibitions, historic sites, and widely noticed historical art, ranging from oil paintings to public sculpture and commemorative monuments" (p. xii). He locates collective memory in material objects external to the individual, not in individual, internal memories, believing that collective memory is memory that is shared through these objects. In contrast, Bodnar (1992, 1994) believes that the collective memory is a society's official (institutional/governmental) memory merged with its vernacular (local/folk) memory. Wertsch and Roediger (2008) distinguish between these competing definitions by calling the former approach collective memory and the latter collective remembering. Other theorists choose to treat both concepts together.

Many other approaches and definitions exist. Schwartz (2008) says collective memory "refers to the social distribution of beliefs, feelings, and moral judgments about the past" (p. 76). Young (1993) prefers the term "collected memory" to "collective memory" because he says that it better reflects the reality of memorials. Memorials collect people's memories into a place of memory and then present them in a unified fashion. When people gather at the places of memory, they have a sense that they share a past. This is of course an illusion in one sense — they have their own individual memories that do not overlap and may even contradict each other — but these illusions can still be unifying, however briefly.

Theoretical Perspectives

Specific topics, theoretical stances, and methodological approaches vary across the field of collective memory studies. Research topics include commemoration, rituals, holidays, textbooks, photographs, family histories, group memories, and traumatic experiences, capturing memories ranging from the Holocaust to the US Civil War, local celebrations, the trauma of slavery, and memory projects in the former Soviet Union. Collective memory encompasses many concepts, including "family memory, interactive group memory, and social, political, national, and cultural memory" (Assmann, 2008, p. 55).

Some sociologists view collective memory through the lens of conflict theory, emphasizing how memory can be used by the powerful to shape public agendas for their benefit. Loewen's (1996, 1999) studies of history textbooks and roadside memorials across the United States show how the past is often reconstructed to legitimate inequality. Others take a more functionalist approach, examining how collective memory can unify disparate groups into a community. Coser (1992) explains how, as a young immigrant to the United States, he had trouble understanding classmates because he did not share the same memories they did, such as memories of American sports teams and great baseball players, of historical events like Pearl Harbor, or references from popular culture. Vinitzky-Seroussi (2002) examines how mourning rituals and memorials helped both supporters and detractors of Yitzhak Rabin negotiate understanding after his assassination. Both sociologists emphasize the unifying aspect of shared memories.

The field has been expanding into new areas, such as the commodification of memory. For example, Meyers (2009) suggests that the use of collective memory by advertisers should be investigated more. Studies of advertising focus on how messages are interpreted by consumers. Collective memory studies could spend more time looking at how messages are interpreted, not just at how they are produced.

Further Insights

How Can Memory Be Collective?

Because societies do not have memories in the usual sense of the word, there are theorists such as Susan Sontag who argue that the idea of collective memory is misnamed, that what is labeled "memory" is actually just an instruction to the collectivity to single out one particular explanation of the past to believe. Collective memory in this view becomes a new name for ideology (Assmann, 2008).

This viewpoint is countered by theorists in the field with arguments that individual memory is never strictly individual because it is fundamentally supported by the group. Halbwachs (1980) points out that even the most individual memories are collective in a sense — they are memories of people who live in a society, memories that are shaped by a society's language, culture, and symbols. Memory is social. Social occasions call forth memories (sometimes ritually) and culture shapes how memories are recalled and presented to others. When a person belongs to a group, he or she learns about the group's past; this involves not just a rote memorization but also a willingness to claim and share in that past, and to participate in the rituals used by the group to commemorate that past, like holidays and memorials (Schudson, 1992; Wertsch & Roediger, 2008).

Also, memories are collective and social because they are preserved in the institutions of society. Laws, stories, rituals, rules, traditions — anything not created on the spot today is, in a sense, the institutionalized memory of yesterday. Sometimes the past is overtly institutionalized when it is embedded in monuments and historical markers. Institutionalized memory is no longer individual; it becomes a synthesis that is more than the sum of its parts. It is the collectivity that keeps the past alive when all other traces of it have vanished. Collective memory can last as long as there is a group or a social context that transmits it (Hutton, 1993; Lowenthal, 1985).

Memory versus History

Wertsch and Roediger (2008) distinguish history from memory by claiming that history's goal is the discovery of the facts of the past, while memory's goal is identity. History prioritizes truth while memory is content to rearrange the past to serve its projects. They cite Assmann's comparison of Moses and Akhenaten to illustrate the distinction. Moses is an important part of the collective memory of Judaism and Christianity, but there is little to no historical evidence for him. He is important to the collective memory of the group as a unifying image. In contrast, Akhenaton, disgraced, was banished from the collective memory of his time and forgotten until historians and archeologists rediscovered him and restored him to the historical record. He was not handed down over the centuries as a symbol used to unify a group.

While this is a useful distinction, it is also an ideal type. Historians have facts and truth as a goal, but the historical record is also open to the same distortions that are woven into collective memory. Many historical inaccuracies have been institutionalized in forms from history books to public monuments.

In yet another view, Schwartz (2008) sees history as an adjunct of memory:

There are other terms referring to ways people experience the past. One popular such term is heritage. History and memory are both seen as less subjective than heritage. Heritage carries an implication of a partisan or biased take on the past, implying a loyalty to a specific version of the past rather than an honest reckoning with the facts (Lowenthal, 1998).

Further complicating the question about the difference between history and memory is that this relationship itself has changed. History and memory used to be almost synonymous, before modern standards of history as impartial truth and scholarship evolved. Beginning in the late Renaissance, and gaining speed over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the older idea of history (a form of memory shaped to support a specific group identity) was replaced with a new image of history and memory as opposites. History became seen as neutral, verifiable, and evidence-based; this approach is referred to as historiography. Memory was seen as inaccurate and biased.

World War II

Recently, this opposition has faded as social scientists explore the ways history and memory interact (Assmann, 2008). For example, in history textbooks, history and national memory are often one and the same. When awkward facts emerge, history has to keep memory honest. Sometimes, though, the counter-memories of groups who lacked power when official histories were written force historians to reevaluate the dominant narrative.

This tension between history and memory can be seen in the study of the collective memory of war. In their horror and brutality, wars provide important events for studying collective memory. In a study of how World War II is presented in textbooks in England, France, Germany, China and the United States, Crawford and Foster (2008) point out that wars necessitate an intense evocation of group identity and loyalty. The boundaries between "us" and "them" are never as important as in a time of war. Propaganda relies on collective memory for images that unite the group against the enemy. In war's aftermath, the group creates a narrative explaining the causes and outcome of the event, and commemorates the heroism of the citizens and soldiers and the loss of the dead through memorials, holidays, and public rituals.

World War II was a catastrophe on an unprecedented scale. Historians believe that a minimum of 60 million people died in the war. Cities were razed and atrocities were widespread. The aftermath of the war is staggering; it reconfigured the political structure of the entire world. Since the war happened within the past century, it was better documented than any previous war. The official narratives of the war found in history textbooks show how the distinct collective memories of groups shape how they present history, even when the facts are not in dispute.

Crawford and Foster found that the content of Holocaust history is remarkably similar in England and Germany; what differs is how textbooks in each nation apply lessons of the Holocaust to the present. In England it is presented as another history module — albeit an important one. Yet in Germany, textbooks tend to relate the events as still an important part of German identity. German textbooks connect the Holocaust to contemporary, similar cases of human rights abuses and genocide. The same historical facts, then, have different implications for different groups, and can be used in the shaping of quite different collective memories (Crawford & Foster, 2008).

Viewpoints

Why Does the Collective Memory of the Past Matter?

In the most basic sense, the events of today would not be possible without the events of yesterday. The past shapes the present, since it causes today's effects. But additionally, people act as if the past matters. People accord weight to tradition, upholding the laws, rules, and procedures inherited from yesterday, and sometimes look to the past for guidance (Schudson, 1992).

People who share a common past use it to create bonds. In the modern world, this shared past is usually imagined, and people form what Anderson (1983) calls an "imagined community" (imagined, since most of its members will never actually meet each other) based on the idea that they share a common past. Without memory, there can be no identity — this is true for both individuals and collectives. Maier (1988) states that "Memory is certainly a prerequisite of identity, which rests on an awareness of continuity through time….memory (or a history) seems to constitute much of identity, such that individual or collective personality need not be created anew every instant" (pp. 149–150). There is a circular relationship between memory and identity. Memory is a component of identity, yet identity helps determine what will be remembered and what will be forgotten (Gillis, 1994; Glassberg, 1996).

Collective memory is important also because public versions of history can be used as a hegemonic tool, embodying the ideals of the ruling class to support its power. There is an old saying that history is written by the victors. This refers not only to what version of history is told in history books — it also means that when a group has power, it can use that power to present its version of the past in monuments, laws, rules, ceremonies, holidays, and through many other institutions. Collective memory also can be used to heal a group from past trauma, make sense of confusing events, and to provide guidance for the future (Qi, 2008).

Collective memory does not always present a clear and complete picture of what actually happened in the past. Present needs shape how the past is understood, what is remembered and forgotten, and the morals drawn from past events (Hutton, 1993; Schwartz, 1991). The past provides values in addition to providing identity. At the same time that people shape the past, they are also shaped by it. For example, Schwartz (1991) tracks mentions of George Washington in the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature to analyze how and why different groups of people present Washington in distinct ways. Earlier descriptions of Washington present him as aristocratic; later works emphasize his democratic qualities. The later democratic image came about because the country's ideological views shifted and democratic values were more valued in leaders. These qualities of Washington's weren't invented by anyone — they just were not emphasized in earlier works. The aristocratic qualities of Washington likewise were never downplayed entirely. This shows that people reshape their interpretations of the past to suit the needs of the present, but they often do so by reinterpreting events and qualities already lodged in the public memory. The shaping of Washington was a two-way process; after his image became more democratic, it supported the push toward the expansion of democracy in the United States.

Schuman and Scott (1989) find that there are generational effects to memory and to deciding what past events are important. People tend to remember and prioritize events that happened in their youth as being the most memorable.

Commemoration and Places of Memory

A great deal of work on collective memory has studied how groups create monuments and memorials as an attempt to affix a version of the past onto material culture. According to Young (1993), providing a place for ritualized remembering gives the illusion that memories are collective as well as collected. An example of this process is found in the Vietnam Veterans memorial in Washington D.C. The monument memorial — with its dark color and low lines — was controversial when it was chosen, because detractors thought it implied shame. It has proved to be popular with the public, though, and a few additions have been made to the site; a flag and a statue of soldiers have been added to the original design. Placing the more instantly comprehensible statue with the original, unusual monument — a black wall, covered with the names of the war dead, polished so that it reflects the faces of viewers — means that just about anyone — whether they supported the war or were opposed to it — can find a message in the memorial that resonates with their personal feelings (Wagner-Pacifici & Schwartz, 1991). The memorial is an example of a site that collects memories.

Nora (1989) believes that modern societies build lieux des memoires (places of memory) because they do not live surrounded by memories, in what he calls "environments of memory," anymore (p. 7). People are obsessed with the past because it is so distinct from the present. Cultures that feel connected with their past do not feel the same need to institutionalize it in memorial forms and places. As people around the world begin to question the received history that they have taken for granted, and as social upheavals cause people to create new collectivities in the service of forging new nations and alliances, the study of how collective memory is created and how it affects society will continue to thrive.

Terms & Concepts

Collected Memory: Young's term for individual memories unified publicly by a commemorative object.

Heritage: History in a glorified form. Often used to imply a relationship with the past that is antithetical to historiography.

Historiography: An examination of how history is created; the critical, source-based writing of history.

Imagined Communities: Anderson's term for nations that are imagined because most of the citizens will never see or know each other, yet they picture themselves as bonded.

Institutions: Patterns of behavior that are regular, repeated, and that have significance in social structure. Institutionalizing memory means embedding it in the patterns — placing narratives in textbooks, or placing a statue of a hero on the courthouse steps.

Lieux de memoires (places of memory): Nora's term for commemorative sites.

Official Memory: The institutionalized memory of the ruling political groups. In Bodnar's work, it stands in opposition to the vernacular memory.

Vernacular Memory: The local memory of small groups. In Bodnar's work, it undermines and opposes the official memory.

Bibliography

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Meyers, O. (2009). The engine's in the front, but its heart's in the same place: Advertising, nostalgia, and the construction of commodities as realms of memory. Journal of Popular Culture, 42, 733–755. Retrieved February 2, 2010 from EBSCO online database, Academic Search Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=43538763&site=ehost-live

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Qi, W. (2008). On the cultural constitution of collective memory. Memory, 16, 305–317. Retrieved February 2, 2010 from EBSCO online database, Academic Search Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=31192909&site=ehost-live

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Suggested Reading

Alexander, J., Eyerman, R., Giesen, B., Smelser, N. & Sztompka, P. Eds. (2004). Cultural trauma and collective identity. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Brundage, W. F., ed. (2000). Where these memories grow: History, memory and southern identity. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.

Connerton, P. (1989). How societies remember. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Griffin, L., & Bollen, K. (2009). What do these memories do? Civil rights remembrance and racial attitudes. American Sociological Review, 74, 594–614. Retrieved February 2, 2010 from EBSCO online database, SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=43540280&site=ehost-live

Linenethal, E. T. & Englehardt, T., editors. (1996). History wars: The Enola Gay and other battles for the American past. New York: Henry Holt.

Neiger, M., Meyers, O., & Zandberg E. (Eds.) (2011). On media memory: Collective memory in a new media age. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.