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Outline
1. Types of Nation Building
2. Memory and Nation
3. Collective Memory – National Memory
4. Conclusion
Irredentism – irredentist (from Italian irredenta –
unredeemed): advocating annexation of territory of
one state by another state based on common
ethnicity or historical 'rights':
Separatism – separatist: advocating autonomy or
an own state/governmen for part of the territory of
an existing state
Types of Nationalism (Michael Hechter)
• State-building nationalism: England, France
• Peripheral nationalism: Quebec, Scotland, Catalonia
• Irredentist nationalism: Sudeten Germans, Hungarians in
Romania
• Unification nationalism: Germany, Italy
Michael Hechter, Containing Nationalism (Oxford, New
York, 2000), pp. 15-17
Pattern of a successful national
movement from below (M. Hroch)
A crisis of legitimacy
A certain amount of vertical social mobility
(educated people from the non-dominant
group)
High level of social communication (literacy,
schooling, market relations)
Nationally relevant conflicts of interest
Nation building in non-dominant ethnies
(Phase A) Groups in the ethnic community start to discuss their own
ethnicity and conceive of it as a nation-to-be: scholarly enquiry into and
dissemination of an awareness of the linguistic, cultural, social and
historical attributes of the nation-to-be
(Phase B) A new range of activists try to “awaken” national
consciousness and to persuade as many members as possible of the
ethnic group – the potential compatriots – that it is important to gain all
the attributes of a fully-fledged nation: (1) development of a national
culture based on the local language and its use in education,
administration and economy, (2) civil rights and self-administration, (3)
creation of a complete social structure – beginning of a national
movement
(Phase C) A mass movement is formed which pursues these aims: a
fully-fledged social structure of the would-be nation comes into being
Miroslav Hroch, From National Movement to the Fully-Fledged Nation, pp. 61-62
Outline
1. Types of Nation Building
2. Memory and Nation
3. Collective Memory – National Memory
4. Conclusion
“A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle. Two
things, which in truth are but one, constitute
this soul or spiritual principle. One lies in the
past, one in the present. One is the possession
in common of a rich legacy of memories; the
other is present-day consent, the desire to live
together, the will to perpetuate the value of the
heritage that one has received in an undivided
form”
Ernest Renan
“ethnies are constituted, not by lines of physical
descent, but by the sense of continuity, shared
memory and collective destiny, i.e. by lines of
cultural affinity embodied in myths, memories,
symbols and values retained by a given cultural
unit of population.”
A.D. Smith, National Identity, p. 29
Ethno-Symbolism
• Modern nations and pre-modern ethnies
are linked
• Ethnies are crucial for the formation of
nations
• Myths, symbols, folk tales, histories, memories,
cultural traditions play important roles in
transforming ethnies in nations
• They are the basis for social cohesion
Outline
1. Types of Nation Building
2. Memory and Nation
3. Collective Memory – National Memory
4. Conclusion
‘It is in society that people normally acquire
their memories. It is also in society that
they recall, recognize, and localize their
memories’ (Halbwachs, 1925, 1992, p.
38).
Collective Memory
Concept introduced by the French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs in 1925,
based on ideas of Emile Durkheim
Individual Memory
Collective Memory
Personal, autobiographic Social, historical
Memory of things I have
experienced myself,
where I have been
present
Incorporates information
about the world beyond
my experience, before I
was born or where I
have not been present
Social framework of
remembering
Constitutes a kind of
social framework
Maurice Halbwachs
1877-1945
Emile Durkheim,
1858-1917
Multiplicity of Memory
We can understand each memory as it occurs in individual
thought only if we locate each within the thought of the
corresponding group. We cannot properly understand their
relative strength and the ways in which they combine within
individual thought unless we connect the individual to the
various groups of which he is simultaneously a member.
Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory (Chicago,
1992), p.53
Collective Memory
• Individual remains the real holder of memory
• Memory changes over time
• The collective (family, class, religious community, nation)
decides what is valuable to remember
• Cultural memory is based on socially organised
mnemonics, institutions, and media
Memory is a social product - Individual memory is
dependent on society
“For this purpose we should conceptualize collective
memory as the result of the interaction among three types
of historical factors: the intellectual and cultural traditions
that frame all our representations of the past, the memory
makers who selectively adopt and manipulate these
traditions, and the memory consumers who use, ignore or
transform such artefacts according to their own interests.”
Wulf Kansteiner, “Finding Meaning in memory: A
Methodological Critique of Collective Memory Studies,”
History and Theory 41 (May 2002), pp. 197-197
Collective Memory and Commemoration
Publicly shared memories are shaped by ceremonies,
cemeteries, museums, symbols, public holidays,
monuments
Construction and identity of groups
Les lieux de mémoire – sites of memory (Pierre Nora)
Sites of Memory can be
• places such as archives, museums, cathedrals, palaces,
cemeteries, and memorials;
• concepts and practices such as commemorations,
generations, mottos, and all rituals;
• objects such as inherited property, commemorative
monuments, manuals, emblems, basic texts, and
symbols.
Les lieux de mémoire – sites of memory (Pierre Nora)
History and Memory
“Memory installs remembrance within the sacred;
history, always prosaic, releases it again. Memory
is blind to all but the group it binds… At the heart
of history is a critical discourse that is antithetical
to spontaneous memory, History is perpetually
suspicious of memory, and its true mission is to
suppress and destroy it.”
Collective Memory vs. History
• Identity project (usually a
picture of heroism,
victimhood, etc.)
• Impatient with ambiguity
• Ignores counterevidence
in order to preserve
established narrative
Aspires to arrive at objective
truth, regardless of
consequences
Recognizes complexity and
ambiguity
May revise existing
narrative in light of new
evidence (archives, etc.)
But… is this dichotomy true? What are the functions of history and
historical research in nation building?
From: Voices of Collective Remembering, Universitetet i Oslo, May 2004, by
James V. Wertsch, Washington University in St. Louis
Memory and Power
The past is constructed not as fact
but as myth to serve the interest
of a particular community.
‘National memory ... is constituted by different, often
opposing, memories that, in spite of their rivalries,
construct common denominators that overcome on the
symbolic level real social and political differences to
create an imagined community‘
Alon Confino, Collective Memory and Cultural History,
p.1400
No sharp dichotomy between official
(manipulative) and vernacular (authentic)
memory
“How did people internalize the nation and make
it in remarkably short time an everyday mental
property – a memory as intimate and authentic
as the local, ethnic, and family past?“
Alon Confino, Collective Memory and Cultural
History, p. 1402
Outline
1. Types of Nation Building
2. Memory and Nation
3. Collective Memory – National Memory
4. Conclusion
Nation and Memory
• Individual remains the real holder of memory
• The collective (family, class, religious community, nation)
decides what is valuable to remember
Memory is a social product - Individual memory is
dependent on society
Common memories and traditions ('invented' and 'real)
play a key role in nation building