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This article addresses the issue of social representations of the past, focusing on the relation between collective memory and power. It is argued that cultural shapes of memories (i.e. a memorial, a monument, a diary, a public display) are the space and the place were power relations affect the social representation of the past. In this respect, the choice of representing a controversial past through a specific cultural form can be viewed as a good terrain were to study the process of selecting one of the competing versions of this past. This process, in fact, is closely related to the category of power. Particularly in case of controversial events (such as the Vietnam War, the Hiroshima bombing, the Bologna massacre, the Milan slaughter), Halbwachs’ and Namer’s analyses on the social construction of the past become particularly evident. In those cases there is a conflict among different versions of the past, that can be analysed by referring to the power relations among the different social groups related to that event. If collective memory is the content, and cultural objects are the form of this content, power is the key to understanding why a certain content embodied in a specific form has been selected in a specific context. Methodologically speaking, the notion of commemorative genre represents an useful key to understanding the articulation of power in relation to collective memories. The genre, in fact, can be viewed as a schema of perception, able to organise the process of classifying the competing representations of the past. In fact, if the arena where one version of an historical event successfully competes with another is represented by the cultural and symbolic field, the criteria of this competition are determined by the established genre of memorisation. By sketching the most pertinent dimensions to the understanding of the relations among cultural objects, collective memories and public discourse, it is here shown how the struggle over the most “adequate” social representation of a certain past (i.e. its cultural form) corresponds to a struggle over legitimacy.

In this study, we examine the developments of transactive memory systems and collective mind and their influence on performance in virtual teams. Although one of the oft‐cited benefits of the virtual team is the ability of its members to contribute diverse knowledge and expertise, the question of how virtual team members can bring their respective knowledge and expertise to solve the problems they face has been largely ignored in the past research on virtual teams. Building on an emerging body of socio‐cognitive literature, we argue that transactive memory systems and the collective mind are two important variables that explain team performance. We tested our hypotheses with a longitudinal data set that was collected from 38 virtual teams of graduate management students from six universities in four countries over eight weeks. The results suggest that the influence of team members' early communication volume on team performance decreases as teams develop transactive memory systems and a collective mind. The results further suggest that the development of a collective mind represents a high‐order learning in team settings.

Based on interviews with 27 victims’ family members and survivors, this chapter explores how memory of the Oklahoma City bombing was constructed through participation in groups formed after the bombing and participation in the trials of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. It first addresses the efficacy of a collective memory perspective. It then describes the mental context in which interviewees joined groups after the bombing, the recovery functions groups played, and their impact on punishment expectations. Next, it discusses a media-initiated involuntary relationship between McVeigh and interviewees. Finally, this chapter examines execution witnesses’ perceptions of communication with McVeigh in his trial and execution.

This study aims to explore how emotionally rich collective experiences create lasting, shareable memories, which influence future behaviours. In particular, the role of others and of music in creating value through memories is considered using the concept of socially extended emotions.

Over 250 narratives were gathered from festival attendees in the UK and Finland. Respondents completed a writing task detailing their most vivid memories, what made them memorable, their feelings at the time and as they remembered them, and how they shared them. The narratives were then analysed thematically.

Collective emotion continues to be co-created long after the experience through memory-sharing. The music listened to is woven through this extension of the experience but is, surprisingly, not a critical part of it. The sociality of the experience is remembered most and was key to the memories shared afterwards. The added value of gathering memorable moments, and being able to share them with others, is clearly evidenced.

The study highlights the importance of designing events to create collective emotional moments that form lasting memories. This emphasizes the role of post-experience marketing and customer relationship building to enhance the value that is created customer-to-customer via memory sharing.

The research addresses the lack of literature exploring post-event experience journeys and the collective nature of these. It also deepens a theoretical understanding of the role of time and sociality in the co-creation and extension of emotions and their value in hospitality consumption. A model is proposed to guide future research.

The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 shook the Soviet Union to the core and provided the West with the iconic image of the freedom fighter willing to risk all for the cause of freedom. The pathos of the lost cause provided Hungarians with a new set of heroes akin to those of the failed 1848 Revolution, the best known being Prime Minister Imre Nagy who was executed for siding with the revolutionaries in their bid to establish a sovereign republic. His belated funeral on June 16, 1989 undermined the moral and political authority of the communist regime that had attempted to consign Nagy and his confederates to oblivion and seemed to mimic Emile Durkheim's analysis of piaculum and the conscience collective. But the spectacle of Nagy's funeral only temporarily shrouded significant differences between and within those factions demanding pluralist society, most recently revealed in the acrimonious celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution. These debates are rooted in Hungary's deeply troubled past that strongly questioned republican values in contrast to the authoritarian values of the Hapsburg monarchy, alliance with the Axis, genocide, and its relationship to communism in the wake of the disaster of World War II. Jacques Derrida tells us that it is not easy to exorcise our ghosts; instead, we are prompted to reconstruction. Memory studies, stimulated by studies of the Holocaust, transformed the sociological imagination (especially Friedlander, 1993; LaCapra, 1998a, 1998b, 1998c, 1998d). There has been what Michael Roth referred to as “a turning of oneself so as to be in relation to the past” as an act of witness. The traumatic memory of the 1956 Revolution provides yet another case in which a traumatic past is still salient to the political actors in the contemporary arena. This chapter immerses itself in the emergence of historical sociology and with it “memory studies,” that is: (1) the relationship between identity, memory, and embodiment; and (2) the relationship between historical circumstance and collective memory formation (described in diverse approaches such as Adorno, 1959; 1997; Nora, 1989; Postone, Martha, & Kobyashi 2009). In particular, there is in historical sociology an emergent interest in (1) commemorative practices, memorializing addresses, memento; and (2) the struggles over memory, remembering, and forgetting.

The increasing availability and popularity of ways to capture personal memories using technologies such as digital cameras is beginning to alter the way in which personal memory images are produced, retained and circulated. Unlike the analog technologies, it is now possible to create an immediately available presence on the Internet. When examined from the perspective of voice, this phenomenon expands the potential of creating personal history narratives that could be collated together to produce a non‐institutional history of an era. This paper explores the ways in which the digital technologies can facilitate the production of such histories and what the technologies could do the sense of presence of an individual in the realm of the virtual.

This paper analyses how the history of the Mongol invasions of Japan in the 13th century was used to create a collective national memory of modern Japan and how individuals and the Japanese public promoted these memories through a campaign of constructing memorials to strengthen Japan's unified national consciousness in times of national crisis.

The main research material is derived from Japanese newspaper archives, National Diet library database as well as Japanese and English secondary literature.

This paper argues that three Japanese concepts, such as kokunan (national crisis), kokui (national prestige or pride) and gokoku (protecting the country), were essential for the creation of collective Japanese memory and identity.

The paper outlines the narrative formed around the history of the Mongol invasions of Japan to create a unified national identity through a collective historical memory in times of Japanese “national crisis” felt in its external relations.

Prodemocracy protest in South Korea in the 1980s can be described in terms of two waves of sustained activism between 1979 and 1987. One wave was brutally repressed in the Gwangju Uprising of May 1980, while the other succeeded in bringing in a transition to democracy in June 1987. How did activists recover from the repression in the first wave, and how did they create a viable movement in the second wave? This work focuses on the role of memory work about the Gwangju Uprising in the mobilization of the prodemocracy movement. Drawing on a wide assortment of documents collected from various archives in South Korea, the author demonstrates how memory work contributed to the movement dynamics. Cognitively, memory work radicalized movement participants such that they became completely disillusioned with the legitimacy of state power. Emotionally, memory work triggered a moral shock among recruits that motivated them to take the high risks associated with activism. Relationally, memory work provided a bonding experience for activists within a network. The findings also show a process through which memory work becomes a powerful social force: emergence of a challenger, proliferation of an alternative narrative, and then a full-blown contention between the state and a challenger. The process also means changes of the status of memory in terms of ownership, salience, and valence.

This paper aims to engage nine women English teachers in exploring their personal memories centered around the perception of their raced, classed and gendered teacher bodies, and led them to conceptualize teaching as invasion.

The process of collective memory work (CMW), a qualitative feminist research method, was used to structure collaborative sessions for the nine women English teachers. In these sessions, the group took up the CMW process as the memories were written, read, analyzed and theorized together.

The analyses of two memories from our group's work builds understanding of how the use of new materialism and a conceptualization of emotions as social, collective and agentic, can expand the understanding of the teacher bodies and disrupt normalizing narratives of teaching and learning. The post-humanist concept of intra-action leads one to better understand the boundaries in the teacher – student relationships that is built/invaded, and to see the ways materials, humans, emotions and discourses are entangled in the teaching encounters.

This study demonstrates how sustained and collective research methodologies like CMW can open space for teachers to more fully explore their identities, encounters and relationships. Further, unpacking everyday classroom moments (through the framework of literacy-as-event) can yield deep and critical understanding of how bodies, emotions and non-human objects all become entangled when teaching becomes an act of invasion.

World War I is the pivot of twentieth century American history because it transformed the United States from a regional into a global power. As the fiftieth anniversary of World War II winds down, we remind ourselves of the first “Great War” and its continuing importance to American self‐conception and memory.