Dynamics of Memory and Identity in Contemporary Europe

Dynamics of Memory and Identity in Contemporary Europe PDF Author: Eric Langenbacher
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 0857455818
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
The collapse of the Iron Curtain, the renationalization of eastern Europe, and the simultaneous eastward expansion of the European Union have all impacted the way the past is remembered in today’s eastern Europe. At the same time, in recent years, the Europeanization of Holocaust memory and a growing sense of the need to stage a more “self-critical” memory has significantly changed the way in which western Europe commemorates and memorializes the past. The increasing dissatisfaction among scholars with the blanket, undifferentiated use of the term “collective memory” is evolving in new directions. This volume brings the tension into focus while addressing the state of memory theory itself.

Dynamics of Memory and Identity in Contemporary Europe

Dynamics of Memory and Identity in Contemporary Europe PDF Author: Eric Langenbacher
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 0857455818
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
The collapse of the Iron Curtain, the renationalization of eastern Europe, and the simultaneous eastward expansion of the European Union have all impacted the way the past is remembered in today’s eastern Europe. At the same time, in recent years, the Europeanization of Holocaust memory and a growing sense of the need to stage a more “self-critical” memory has significantly changed the way in which western Europe commemorates and memorializes the past. The increasing dissatisfaction among scholars with the blanket, undifferentiated use of the term “collective memory” is evolving in new directions. This volume brings the tension into focus while addressing the state of memory theory itself.

Collective Memory and European Identity

Collective Memory and European Identity PDF Author: Willfried Spohn
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351950592
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
Is it possible to create a collective European identity? In this volume, leading scholars assess the link between collective identity construction in Europe and the multiple memory discourses that intervene in this construction process. The authors believe that the exposure of national collective memories to an enlarging communicative space within Europe affects the ways in which national memories are framed. Through this perspective, several case studies of East and West European memory discourses are presented. The first part of the volume elaborates how collective memory can be identified in the new Europe. The second part presents case studies on national memories and related collective identities in respect of European integration and its extension to the East. This timely work is the first to investigate collective identity construction on a pan-European scale and will be of interest to academics and postgraduate students of political sociology and European studies.

History, Memory, and Trans-European Identity

History, Memory, and Trans-European Identity PDF Author: Aline Sierp
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317662040
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
This book questions the presupposition voiced by many historians and political scientists that political experiences in Europe continue to be interpreted in terms of national history, and that a European community of remembrance still does not exist. By tracing the evolution of specific memory cultures in two successor countries of the Fascist/Nazi regime (Italy and Germany) and the impact of structural changes upon them, the book investigates wider democratic processes, particularly concerning the conservation and transmission of values and the definition of identity on different levels. It argues that the creation of a transnational European memory culture does not necessarily imply the erasure of national and local forms of remembrance. It rather means the creation of a further supranational arena where diverging memories can find their expression and can be dealt with in a different way. Through the triangulation of agents of memory construction, constraints and opportunities and actual portrayals of the past, this volume explores the difficulties faced by a multinational entity like the EU in reaching some kind of consensus on such a sensitive subject as history.

Collective Memory and European Identity

Collective Memory and European Identity PDF Author: Willfried Spohn
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9780367604387
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In this volume, leading scholars assess the link between collective identity construction in Europe and the multiple memory discourses that intervene in this construction process. This timely work is the first to investigate collective identity construction on a pan-European scale and will be of interest to academics and postgraduate students of po

Performing the Past

Performing the Past PDF Author: Karin Tilmans
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
ISBN: 9089642056
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
Karin Tilmans is an historian, and academic coordinator of the Max Weber Programme at the European University Institute, Florence. Frank van Vree is an historian and professor of journalism at the University of Amsterdam. Jay M. Winter is the Charles J. Stille Professor of History at Yale. --

Collective Memory, National Identity, and Ethnic Conflict

Collective Memory, National Identity, and Ethnic Conflict PDF Author: Victor Roudometof
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313077215
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Roudometof provides an in-depth analysis of inter-ethnic relations in the southern Balkans. He examines the evolution of the Macedonian Question and the production of rival national narratives by Greeks, Bulgarians, and Macedonians. He introduces the concept of a national narrative in order to account for the production and proliferation of different forms of collective memory among the rival nation-states. Roudometof deconstructs the national narratives of the competing sides and shows the limits of these narratives and their biases. He also develops an alternative interpretation of Macedonian national formation. The contentious issue of Macedonian national minorities in the southern Balkans is examined as well as the issue of the Albanian movements toward self-determination and succession in Kosovo and western Macedonia. Roudometof argues that the Macedonian minority groups are not as numerous in the neighboring states as it is conventionally assumed. With regard to the Albanian national question, he provides a review of the post-1945 relations between Albania and Greece, the Albanians of Kosovo and the Serbs, and the Albanians and Macedonians. He argues that the Albanian nationalist movements have grown out of the interaction between Albanians and their neighboring nations and ethnic groups. An important resource for scholars, students, and other researchers involved with the Balkans and ethnic conflict resolution in general.

Memorylands

Memorylands PDF Author: Sharon Macdonald
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135628793
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
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, embodiment, commodification, nostalgia and Ostalgie, the musealization of everyday and folk-life, Holocaust commemoration and tourism, narratives of war, the heritage of Islam, transnationalism, and the future of the past. Memorylands is engagingly written and accessible to general readers as well as offering a new synthesis for advanced researchers in memory and heritage studies. It is essential reading for those interested in identities, memory, material culture, Europe, tourism and heritage.

Memory Politics, Identity and Conflict

Memory Politics, Identity and Conflict PDF Author: Zheng Wang
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319626213
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 107

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Book Description
This book focuses on the methodology of research on historical memory and contributes to theoretical discussions concerning the use of historical memory as a variable to explain political action and social movement. The chapters of the book conceptualize the relationship between historical memory and national identity formation, perceptions, and policy-making. The author particularly analyses how contested memory and the related social discourse can lead to nationalism and international conflict. Based on theories and research from multiple fields of studies, this book proposes a series of analytic frameworks for the purpose of conceptualizing the functions of historical memory. These analytic frameworks can help categorize, measure, and subsequently demonstrate the effects of historical memory. This book also discusses how to use public opinion polls, textbooks, important texts and documents, monuments and memory sites for conducting research to examine the functions of historical memory.

Memory and the Future of Europe

Memory and the Future of Europe PDF Author: Peter J. Verovsek
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781526163769
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
This book examines the role of collective memory in the origins and development of the European Union. It traces Europe's political, economic and financial crisis to the loss of these memories of the rupture of 1945. In order to survive the EU will have to prove that it can act effectively in the face of future challenges.

The Burden of the Past

The Burden of the Past PDF Author: Anna Wylegala
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253046734
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Essays on how chaos, totalitarianism, and trauma have shaped Ukraine’s culture: “A milestone of the scholarship about Eastern European politics of memory.” —Wulf Kansteiner, Aarhus University In a century marked by totalitarian regimes, genocide, mass migrations, and shifting borders, the concept of memory in Eastern Europe is often synonymous with notions of trauma. In Ukraine, memory mechanisms were disrupted by political systems seeking to repress and control the past in order to form new national identities supportive of their own agendas. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, memory in Ukraine was released, creating alternate visions of the past, new national heroes, and new victims. This release of memories led to new conflicts and “memory wars.” How does the past exist in contemporary Ukraine? The works collected in The Burden of the Past focus on commemorative practices, the politics of history, and the way memory influences Ukrainian politics, identity, and culture. The works explore contemporary memory culture in Ukraine and the ways in which it is being researched and understood. Drawing on work from historians, sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, and political scientists, the collection represents a truly interdisciplinary approach. Taken together, the groundbreaking scholarship collected in The Burden of the Past provides insight into how memories can be warped and abused, and how this abuse can have lasting effects on a country seeking to create a hopeful future.