Generations and Collective Memory

Your brothers and sisters and you have collective memories of your childhood, just as your family has a collective memory of its illustrious forbears (or its notorious ne’er-do-wells); our nation has a collective memory of, e.g.,  the Kennedy assassination, made piquant by collective memories of the Zapruder film; in between, collective memory is possessed by ethnic groups, political parties, neighborhoods and towns, and, returning to the national stage, collective memory of great events, such as wars and disasters.  We commemorate sacred places, such as a battlefield (or a place like Ford Theater), and the collective memory is advanced by photographs, texts, and other objects, as well as by individuals.  Corning and Schuman here present a synthesis of concepts of collective memory, also of American historical figures (such as Jefferson, Lincoln, and Columbus, through the way we have represented them), also of events remembered as important in other nations (China, Israel, Japan, Lithuania, Pakistan, and especially Russia and Ukraine).  Nor do they ignore wars (WW II and Vietnam) or big events (Woodstock, and 9/11).  They are adept at linking memories to particular periods of the life cycle (e.g., independence for Lithuanian citizens, plus many other examples of the “critical years,” when social engagements and institutional placements loom large in a nation).    The result is one of the most important accounts of collective memory yet to emerge, featuring very close empirical research and new conceptual claims.