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Morpheus - Revista Eletrônica em Ciências Humanas - Ano 09, número 14, 2012 ISSN 1676-2924 MEMORY, SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS AND IMMATERIAL CULTURE Valdir Jose Morigi UFRGS- Doctorate in Sociology from USP – Prof. PPGCOM 33165432 - [email protected] Carla Pires Vieira da Rocha UFRGS- Master’s Degree student at PPGCOM – 33165432 - [email protected] Simone Semensatto UFRGS- Master’s Degree student at PPGCOM – 33165432 - [email protected] ABSTRACT: This paper reflects on social memory, its articulation with social representations, and its role as mediator in the construction of meanings derived from manifestations of immaterial culture. It takes as an example the study of community celebrations, cultural practices which take place in the municipality of Estrela/RS, to demonstrate how knowledge of tradition and the local cultural is produced, transmitted and used, involving different social agents and the network of sociability responsible for the construction of an information network and the sharing of meanings that permeate the space of the celebration. In this process, social representations exercise the mediation produced in the sharing of meanings, as constitutive raw materials of immaterial culture and of the intangibility of social memory. KEYWORDS: Social Representations; Immaterial Culture; Social Memory 1 INTRODUCTION Some issues currently permeate the debates on immaterial culture and social memory. The multiple forms of production and circulation of cultural manifestations – religiosity, arts, narratives, discourses, and literature – have assumed new meanings and forms through the interfaces between the cultural industry and the tradition of local cultures. In this sense, we can review some questions: What is the meaning of memory of local and regional cultural traditions, represented by immaterial culture? What is the meaning of rediscovering the past or reencountering the past in the present? The transmission of tradition, anchored in the memories and past learning processes within individual or collective memories through socially shared experience, emphasizes the importance of celebrations as practices for the continuity of the local culture. The transmission of tradition via memory enables the production of shared meanings, as an active and dynamic process and the fruit of previously instituted power relationships, which construct what we recognize as part of human culture. The rural community celebrations of the municipality of Estrela/RS, as cultural practices that communicate collective learning processes and knowledge, are used as an example for 193 Morpheus - Revista Eletrônica em Ciências Humanas - Ano 09, número 14, 2012 ISSN 1676-2924 understanding how part of the local cultural tradition depends on the transmission of the group’s values and exchanges of knowledge between the protagonists of the celebrations. In this process, social representations exercise the symbolic mediation produced in the sharing of meanings, as the constitutive raw material of immaterial culture and intangibility of social memory. 2 MEMORY AND SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS: ARTICULATION, MEDIATION AND IMMATERIAL CULTURE Memory can be understood from several scientific perspectives. In the fields of sociology and social psychology, memory can be conceived through its socio-cultural character, which is the perspective adopted in this study. In this context, remembrance and memorization are seen as culturally constructed processes that are part of the dynamics of the social life. According to Braga (2000), human memory is conceived as a process elaborated in the collective movement emerging from interactions, and is constituted in culture. Both symbolic signs (oral and written words) and iconic signs (drawn or sculpted images) can serve as a support for the construction of memory. Thus, it can be anchored in several supports: text, oral communication, sounds, images, etc. (GONDAR, 2005). According to Pollak (1992), social memory is a collective and social phenomenon, collectively constructed and submitted to constant transformations. It transmits inherited local culture and is constituted by socially experienced events. From this point of view, there are three elements that serve to support memory: experienced events, people, and places. These elements are responsible for establishing emotional ties between people. According to the author, memory is selective, since not all facts are registered, and individuals only have memories of the moments to they attach importance and which, for some reason, are subjectively distinguished. In addition, part of the memories can be inherited from events related to their ancestors. According to Braga (2000), remembrance is affected by unconscious transformations, because of individual or collective interests and feelings; however, “[...] this movement is only possible if the people were a part or are still a part of the same social group,” (2000, p.51). From this perspective, collective memory is only effective in as far as the feelings, thoughts and actions of each individual are expressed in social means and circumstances, where they share a bond, coexistence and knowledge. For Halbwachs (1990), individual memory is not entirely closed. It is limited in time and space. Collective memory also suffers the same limits. Historical events are auxiliary in our memory; they do not play any other role, except for dividing time as shown on a clock or determined by a calendar. 194 Morpheus - Revista Eletrônica em Ciências Humanas - Ano 09, número 14, 2012 ISSN 1676-2924 For an individual to remember his past he has to recall the memories of others. These are points of reference that are fixed by society. Consequently, collective memory involves feelings of belonging and identity, since memory is always dependent on interactions and social groups. Collective memory is characterized by an intense emotional component that emerges from the interaction and experiences between members of the community. Thus, it is important to maintain the integrity and survival of the group in time. The group makes the time of the collective memory. For Halbwachs (1990), the construction of permanent social ties, maintained with relative strength among individuals, is directly linked to the cohesion guaranteed by social situations of memory. Such situations are understood as a system of values that unify determined groups: family and friends, religion, class, etc. Memory is a social construction, produced by men out of their relationships, values and lived experiences. It is transformed with the passage of time, and the history of individuals takes new routes. Thus, it can be said that memory is not only a historical register of facts, but a combination of past social constructions, with significant factors of the present social life, in a process of continual reconstruction. Representation originates in a subject (individual or collective) immersed in specific conditions of his space and time, and is referred to an object (JODELET, 2002). The author proposes three factors to be taken into account in the production of representations: culture, communication, and the insertion of socio-economic, institutional, educational and ideological levels. According to Jodelet (2002, p. 22), social representations act as “[...] a form of socially elaborated and shared knowledge, with a practical objective, which contributes to the construction of a common reality for a social group.” In other words, they follow the needs, interests and desires of the group. Daily symbolic representations express and articulate different forms of knowledge, which help in the construction of identities, cultural practices and traditions, which in turn form lifestyles. In Moscovici’s conception (2003, p.37), our mind is not exempt from social conditioning imposed by its representations. Language and culture structure and organize our thoughts, since: All systems of classification, all images and all descriptions that circulate within a society, even as scientific descriptions, implicate a bond of previous systems and images, a stratification of collective memory and a reproduction in language that invariably reflects earlier knowledge and breaks the ties of the present information. Thus, the force of a representation is not due to its social origin, but to possibility of it being shared by all and strengthened by tradition. Likewise, “to categorize someone or something means to choose one of the paradigms stored in our memory, and establish a positive or negative relationship to it.” Anchoring and objectifying are two ways of dealing with memory. 195 Morpheus - Revista Eletrônica em Ciências Humanas - Ano 09, número 14, 2012 ISSN 1676-2924 The first is responsible for the movement of memory, “[...] it is always placing and removing objects, people, and events, which it classifies according to the type and labels them with a name.” The second is directed “[...] outside (the others), taking from there concepts and images to join them and reproduce them in the exterior world, to make things known from what is already known,” (MOSCOVICI, 2003, p.63-78). Jovchelovitch (2000) demonstrates how social representations are constituted in forms of symbolic mediation ingrained in the public sphere, affirming that “The potential space, that of symbols, both connects and separates the subject from the object-world. So it is of the essence of the potential space to recognize a shared reality – a reality of the Other,” (p.178). Consequently, it is the mediation space “[...] between social subject and alterity, in the struggle to give meaning to and understand the world, that the works of social representation are found,” (p.178). Social representations are born and circulate in spaces of “relative intersubjectivity.” According to Moscovici (2003, p. 99), “[...] representations substitute the flow of information that comes to us through the external world: representations are mediating bonds between the real cause (stimulus) and the concrete effect (response). Thus, the bonds are mediators or random causes.” According to Lefebvre’s theory (1983), it is through social representations that symbolic relationships are manifest; the societal forms, hierarchies, social positions and feeling of the group identity are strengthened. Representations circulate around institutions, symbols and archetypes, intervening in experience and practice, forming part of them, but without dominating them. Meanwhile, still in keeping with Lefebvre (1983), memory cannot be confused with representation, and its distinction resides in actual experience, "While there is presence, the past is intertwined with the present and conserves the changing vivacity of the present, which does not mean presence, but an absence in the presence. While it is represented, the past is fixed and dies both in history and in subjective memory.” The author continues with his argument observing that it is frequent that the present (‘the now’) is represented through the past by a memory, "When the past, still alive, dies in representation, it substitutes memory,” (p. 63, free translation). From his viewpoint, this means that the representation is situated between the experienced and the conceived, acting as a mediator, on an individual level, of the subjective conscience. This similarity can be seen in thought and action, in the common sense of a determined group or society. According to Arruda (2002), the theory of social representation does not separate the subject from his context, nor from the subjectivity of the construction of his knowledge. For Gondar (2005, p. 24) “[...] representations are only a part: that which is crystallized and was legitimized in a collectivity.” The author adds that memory as a process, “[...] is much more than 196 Morpheus - Revista Eletrônica em Ciências Humanas - Ano 09, número 14, 2012 ISSN 1676-2924 a group of representations; it is also exercised in a non-representational sphere: ways of feeling, ways of wanting, small gestures, practices of the self, and innovative political actions.” Memory cannot be reduced to representation. “We can articulate emotion and representation in the production of memory as integral parts of the same process,” (p.25). From this perspective, a social representation “[...] is something more than a generic and instituted idea that is imposed on us: all representations are invented and we invent them, making use of a novelty that affects us and our wager on possible paths.” The author concludes that, “This invention is propagated, repeated and transformed into a habit. It is from these habits that men become similar [...],” (GONDAR, 2005, p.25). A great deal of the knowledge of popular culture is transmitted orally, without any written records. This process occurs from one person to another, passed on from father to son, from one group to another, and from one generation to the next. In this form of communication, social memory plays a fundamental role, since the preservation and continuity of group traditions depend on the memories of its members. The transmission of cultural values and tradition occurs through the social memory of the groups that share the same time and geographical space. To contemplate the role of social memory in the construction of meanings in immaterial culture, we need to consider that “memory demands a reflection on involved social processes, announced or experimented in the manifestation, persistence, and transformations of social practice and the cultural contents expressed by social segments in a situation," (MORAES, 2000, p.99). Similarly, as Jean Davallon observes, it is not enough to remember an event or knowledge for this social memory to be mobilized, “The remembered event needs to reencounter its vivacity; and above all, it needs to be reconstructed from the data and common notions of the different members of the social community," (2007, p.25). Investigating the articulation between memory and social representations is useful for understanding the construction of the meanings of manifestations of immaterial culture. Focusing on these community celebrations in the interior of Estrela/RS enables us to understand this articulation and mediation. Community celebrations, by reestablishing the emotional bond of the participants with the community and its past, based on a common experience around immaterial culture, enable the construction of social memory. 3 COMMUNITY CELEBRATIONS, TRANSMISSION OF KNOWLEDGE, TRADITION, AND MANIFESTATIONS OF IMMATERIAL CULTURE The community celebrations are characterized by cultural practices by which the traditional knowledge and local culture are produced, transmitted, and used. In this context, the maintenance of social memory is associated with immaterial culture. Similarly, the practices that 197 Morpheus - Revista Eletrônica em Ciências Humanas - Ano 09, número 14, 2012 ISSN 1676-2924 permeate the celebrations involve the construction of social representations; a process of internalization of roles is seen in its protagonists, situating them in both the daily places they occupy and in the space of the celebration, influencing the processes of their identity constructions and their notions of belonging. In the dynamic of the celebration, cultural tradition possesses centrality; it is exalted from the conception of the event and is perpetuated in the naturalization of the cultural practices, in the reproduction of the differences of behavior, in the forms of conceiving the world, in the relationships of power between males and females and their spaces, being manifest even in their beliefs, their way of life, the collective memory and the social history of the group. Considering that traditions can be reinvented and redefined over time, one can observe that "[...] tradition is not only what remains, but rather a dynamic history that seeks to find spaces, visibility and importance, because of the conditions and social rhythms of the contradictions that modernity itself, by being dynamic, versatile and mutable, produces," (TEDESCO; ROSSETO, 2007, p. 15). Memory emerges in the groups and their rituals. Consequently, the celebrations are occasions in which, in conjunction with the affirmation of traditions, the routine of the past seeks to maintain and renew its meanings, through the construction of common, individual, collective and historical memories. According to Moraes (2000, p.95), "memories actually coexist in our culture [...] juxtaposing, integrating or struggling, in a conceptual ‘mosaic network,’ aspects of distinct and contradictory expressions, in the practice and representations of the individuals and groups." In the transmission of tradition, from generation to generation, the construction that the present makes of the past becomes important, insofar as “memory, considered in a plural sense, is an expression of a feeling, and a way of understanding and relating to the world," (MORAES, 2000, p.95). Fragments of memory emerge from the act of narrating, and, in its representations, the collaborators reconstruct the memory of previous times, confronting the past in the present. This is where its denomination of history from the present time is derived. The question of the transmission of culture is related to the survival of social coexistence. Similarly, an individual taking part in the cultural processes means the possibility of taking part in the society of one’s time. A culture is richer the more the common knowledge enables it to integrate, and for this to occur, recognition of the most differing forms and expressions of culture becomes necessary. Within the innumerable definitions of culture, we can return to the early anthropological meaning by Tylor, "[...] the complex that includes knowledge, beliefs, arts, morals, laws, customs, and other aptitudes and habits acquired by men as members of society," (TYLOR apud LARAIA, 1986, p.25). It is worth noting that the term immaterial culture, though it 198 Morpheus - Revista Eletrônica em Ciências Humanas - Ano 09, número 14, 2012 ISSN 1676-2924 supposes a contraposition to material culture, is an artifice that we use in order to better understand its articulation with the immateriality of social memory. By resuming our reflection on community celebrations, we can explore the cultural dimension of the practices developed there, observing one of the important issues to be contemplated in our time, which is the relationship between local cultures and the impact produced by urban technical progress. This focal point makes it necessary for us to understand, above all, the processes of affirmation of identities and construction of memories linked to immaterial culture, from the perspective of the transformations that we have been experiencing on a global level and that have repercussions in the most distinct spheres. Community celebrations are the festivals held in commemoration of the patron saints of the local communities, mother’s clubs, youth groups and choral leagues. The concern of their protagonists is based on the continuity of this tradition, which is justified by the exodus of the children of small communities towards the cities of the region, in search of work in shoe factories and other industries. Small-scale family production is no longer able to absorb the labor and maintain their children for the harvest work, resulting in their displacement to the urban centers. In view of this situation, the values imposed by the model of consumer society begin to hold precedence. These values involve changes in behavior and in the ways of relating. Therefore, the festivals, as spaces of sociability, anchored in familiar, emotional relationships of companionship and solidity, which are characterized by interpersonal recognition and selfrecognition, give way to individualized sociability, the cold, ephemeral and distant relationships of contemporary society. The concept of Bauman (2007) can be evoked, when he explores new social bonds in our “liquid-modern” society.” The metaphor of liquidity is used by the author to explore all the dimensions of experience, where the dynamic of consumerism rules. From this perspective, the “liquid life” is characterized, among other aspects, by “loose bonds and revocable commitments,” (2007, p.15-16). By resuming the focus on local culture, the forms of urban entertainment are imposed as symbols of these changes in the forms of sociability, consisting in that which is considered “modern” and “developed,” in contraposition to values and standards of regional culture seen as “traditional” and “conservative.” In this context, the standards and values of urban culture become more attractive to the eyes of the younger generations: the dynamic of consumer society treats culture, its expressions and regions and local manifestations as though they were disposable objects and things. In this way, cultural events and happenings are configured as entertainment governed by the logic and the vicissitudes of the market. This dynamic includes an intensified influence of media on culture, where the ephemeral and the saturation of information determine a movement distancing from memory towards forgetfulness. 199 Morpheus - Revista Eletrônica em Ciências Humanas - Ano 09, número 14, 2012 ISSN 1676-2924 It is important to highlight the significance of memories in the process of individual and social identity. The meaning of identity consists of arrangements and rearrangements of vestiges, fragments and events of the past. Memory is, by nature, fragmented. The recreation of an internal world is important for strengthening social relationships, in order to constitute a sense of “us”; a common feeling of belonging, in which the past should be seen as something finished, but as a possible time of having new meaning, from the present towards the future. As Silverstone highlights (2005, p.234): "[...] memory is what we have in the private and public arena to locate ourselves in space and especially in time." Memories of people – neighbors, parents, grandparents – are the foundation of the festivals. These remembrances of the local communities initially recall the notion of individual memory; “[...] it is that which is guarded by an individual and relates to their personal experiences, but that also contains aspects of the social group memory where he grew up, or rather, where he was socialized,” (VON SIMSON, 2001, p.63). In the view of Ribeiro, "[...] memory of the celebration is an essential data in the fixation of knowledge that is learned, experienced and enjoyed there. It is what, in a certain way, assures its repetition; it is remembered in the memory and anticipated in the imagination," (2002, p. 41). Celebrations are a part of the cultural history of humanity. Though its dimensions change over time, its strength persists in the sense of maintaining the identity bonds among the participants and their communities of origin. History and ancestors are attributed, when reconstructing a distant past. As Tedesco and Rosset (2007, p. 22) observe: “Celebrations need to be symbolized, and consequently, need to be given meaning by traditions and constant translations in harmony with the past and symbology of ethnic ancestry.” In this sense, the celebration possesses symbols of communication, expression and human experiences; cultures that need to be preserved and reconstructed, since the representations are mediating bonds of the community’s cultural memory, established by the different ways of retelling the past: stories of life, groups, communities, etc. Social representations act as forms of symbolic mediation rooted in the public sphere, where daily symbolic productions express and articulate different forms of knowledge. These support the construction of identities, cultural practices and traditions, conforming to different ways of life. Consequently, as spaces of intersubjective reality, we can consider these community celebrations as spaces of celebration of memory that are auxiliary in the education of an individual identity and a collective feeling of belonging. From this we can contemplate the intangibility of social memory and its articulation with a construction of meaning and immaterial culture. 200 Morpheus - Revista Eletrônica em Ciências Humanas - Ano 09, número 14, 2012 ISSN 1676-2924 4 FINAL CONSIDERATIONS Collective memory is an important element for maintaining the integrity and survival of a group in time. Thus, it can be characterized as an intense emotional component that emerges from the interactions and sharing of experience between members of the community. Celebrations, as social spaces, strengthen the bonds of sociability and offer the exchange of knowledge, valuing the practices of local culture. Memory plays a fundamental role in the construction of community history, since it is linked to the ways of life that act as guides, giving generational models of behavior over the years. To think of memory as a reconstruction of the past, based on well-defined and delineated social situations, according to Halbwachs, leads us to affirm that it is woven by our emotions and our future expectations, conceiving it as a focal point of resistance at the heart of the relationships of power, and serving to maintain the values of a social group. The memory of the subjects of the celebration is permeated by tensions derived from the articulations between emotions and representations, expressed through the communication of instituted and shared knowledge (as a way of cultivating the cultural roots of tradition). 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