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1 – 10 of over 24000This 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…
Abstract
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.
Ying Hu and Feng’e Zheng
The ancient town of Lijiang is a representative place of ethnic minorities in China’s southwest border area jointly built by many ethnic groups. Its rich and diversified history…
Abstract
Purpose
The ancient town of Lijiang is a representative place of ethnic minorities in China’s southwest border area jointly built by many ethnic groups. Its rich and diversified history, culture and architecture as well as its artistic and spiritual values need to be better retained and explored.
Design/methodology/approach
The protection and inheritance of Lijiang’s cultural heritage will be improved through the construction of digital memory resources. To guide Lijiang’s digital memory construction, this study explores strategies of digital memory construction by analyzing four case studies of well-known memory projects from China and America.
Findings
From the case studies analysis, factors of digital memory construction were identified and compared. Factors led to the discussion of strategies for constructing the digital memory of Lijiang within its design, construction and service phases.
Originality/value
The ancient town of Lijiang is a famous historical and cultural city in China, and it is also a representative place of ethnic minorities in the border area jointly built by many ethnic groups. The rich culture should be preserved and digitalized to offer better use for the whole nation.
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Cem Sen, Korhan Arun and Olcay Okun
This paper articulates a multi-contextual and dynamic system for memory research in relation to multi-cultural organizations (MCOs) by a qualitative research method.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper articulates a multi-contextual and dynamic system for memory research in relation to multi-cultural organizations (MCOs) by a qualitative research method.
Design/methodology/approach
Face-to-face semi-structured interviews were conducted with representatives of 30 national officers in North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to illuminate how the construction of organizational memory (OM) can then be compared and contrasted across different cultures.
Findings
The findings show that OM still mostly resides in individuals with the social transfer. However, even if, cultural aspects define what should be stored, time and purpose, the static memory of individuals becomes dynamic OM that is represented and interpreted in an organization's practices, policies and learning.
Originality/value
The primary contribution is to attempt to dissolve the seeming assumption of dialectical metaphoric perspectives of OM between different but related sub-communities of practice and outcomes. Consequently, socially constructed and individual memory models are necessary to integrate different metaphors according to the multi-context theory, which extends the understanding of the diversity between the cultural backgrounds of individuals and groups.
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This introductory chapter opens up with the notion of ‘technologies of trauma’ and the appropriation of trauma as a cultural form in modernity aided by technologies of vision and…
Abstract
This introductory chapter opens up with the notion of ‘technologies of trauma’ and the appropriation of trauma as a cultural form in modernity aided by technologies of vision and sound. Trauma in modernity has been intimately welded with witnessing and testimony, illuminating an inter-relationship with technologies which simulates our senses and affect, with its capacities to re-present past events through present consciousness, and its ability to produce a moral economy in their own right. Humanity's reliance on technologies to narrate and circulate trauma as a cultural form of exchange and transaction articulates a moment of transcendence in which media as cultural artefacts reconfigure trauma as a cultural form. The notion of second-hand witnessing and the simulation of trauma as a shared and popular genre unleashes trauma as a resonant genre bound with technologies which renew human bonds. Equally it can be reduced to fiction or give way to compassion fatigue. In historically tracing the movement of technologies of trauma as a cultural form over time from televisual witnessing to its aesthetic or perverse renditions in the digital age, the chapter discerns trauma's machinic bind and its enactment as a cultural artefact couched within the sensorium of affect and ethics. The development of mass technological forms over time, from print to the digital age, also concerns the rise of trauma as a cultural form in terms of witnessing, testimony, memorializing, mourning and commemoration. Within these configurations the traumatized human figure is submerged through time as one equally enacted and abstracted through the formats of technology and consumption.
Maureen Henninger and Paul Scifleet
The purpose of this paper is to examine how keeping the records of social networking sites (SNS) communication for secondary analysis institutes a new type of memory practice, one…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine how keeping the records of social networking sites (SNS) communication for secondary analysis institutes a new type of memory practice, one that seeks both to capture shared public memories and form new cultural understandings.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a framework of documentary and memory practices the study conducts a qualitative content analysis of SNS communications collected from Facebook, GooglePlus and Twitter during a national event. It combines a content analysis of the communications with the analysis of their materiality and form to investigate potential contributions of SNS to social and cultural memory including their subsequent custodianship.
Findings
The study finds that the message architecture and metadata of different social networks is comparable and collectively evidences differing aspects of social events to document their unique discourse. Findings demonstrate the contribution SNS is making to social memory and a framework for understanding how SNS in being incorporated into cultural memory practice is presented.
Originality/value
This is one of the few studies that analyses a range of messages from differing SNS in order to understand their impact on cultural memory and the documentary practices of memory institutions.
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Daragh O’Reilly, Kathy Doherty, Elizabeth Carnegie and Gretchen Larsen
The purpose of this paper is to explore how music consumption communities remember their past. Specifically, the paper reports on the role of heritage in constructing the cultural…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore how music consumption communities remember their past. Specifically, the paper reports on the role of heritage in constructing the cultural memory of a consumption community and on the implications for its identity and membership.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing upon insights from theories of cultural memory, heritage, and collective consumption, this interpretive inquiry makes use of interview, documentary, and artefactual analysis, as well as visual and observational data, to analyse an exhibition of the community’s popular music heritage entitled One Family – One Tribe: The Art & Artefacts of New Model Army.
Findings
The analysis shows how the community creates a sense of its own past and reflects this in memories, imagination, and the creative work of the band.
Research limitations/implications
This is a single case study, but one whose exploratory character provides fruitful insights into the relationship between cultural memory, imagination, heritage, and consumption communities.
Practical implications
The paper shows how consumption communities can do the work of social remembering and re-imagining of their own past, thus strengthening their identity through time.
Social implications
The study shows clearly how a consumption community can engage, through memory and imagination, with its own past, and indeed the past in general, and can draw upon material and other resources to heritagise its own particular sense of community and help to strengthen its identity and membership.
Originality/value
The paper offers a theoretical framework for the process by which music consumption communities construct their own past, and shows how theories of cultural memory and heritage can help to understand this important process. It also illustrates the importance of imagination, as well as memory, in this process.
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The relationship between collective memory and the built environment is a complex relationship. Though the concept of memory is fragile, the maintenance and continuation of urban…
Abstract
The relationship between collective memory and the built environment is a complex relationship. Though the concept of memory is fragile, the maintenance and continuation of urban memory are essential to maintain groups' identities and to support the sense of place and place attachment between community members and the architectural settings they use and/or reside in. Preserving the physical aspects of buildings, spaces and settings that are linked with memory, is important to preserve the memory, however, the mere preservation does not guarantee the continuation of memory. The maintenance and continuation of memory is a process that depends on several factors, where the preservation of the physical aspects is only one among several. This paper aims at a better understanding of the intricate relationship between collective memory and the built environment, focusing on the processes of formation, stimulation and consolidation of memory. The paper sheds the lights on historic houses that are embedded with significant meanings and memories to their social contexts. It claims that historic houses can easily shift from ‘potential cultural memory' to ‘actual cultural memory' that could act as pillars of memory to their surrounding community, if the conservation process is done comprehensively, that is to include not only the physical and spatial aspects of memory but also to tackle the social dimensions of memory as well. The paper is organized into three sections: the first investigates the memory formation process, focusing on the social and the spatial dimension of memory, then the second investigates the possible channels to memory stimulation and consolidation, and finally, as a case study, the third section investigates the memory of two historic houses in Cairo, Egypt. The review of the works undertaken in the two houses highlights the difference and the distance between the concept of restoration and the essence of conservation. Findings yielded that, urban memory is an important aspect of cultural heritage that should to be captured and preserved for current and future generations, an aspect that is missing in local conservation approaches. Moreover, to be maintained, urban memory needs physical, social and moral props.
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While memory institutions' use of social media has proliferated, research and scholarly literature on risks, resulting from social media use, memory institutions' social media…
Abstract
Purpose
While memory institutions' use of social media has proliferated, research and scholarly literature on risks, resulting from social media use, memory institutions' social media risk-aware culture and, in particular, social media risk management remains scant. This study addresses this knowledge gap and identifies aspects of social media risk management from other sectors that could inform the cultural heritage sector.
Design/methodology/approach
This research involves a review of the scholarly and professional literature that contribute to social media risk management discourses. These include those that discuss the different categories of social media risks, social media policies, risk-aware culture and social media risk management strategies and processes. Works discussing social media risk management models and frameworks are also included in the review. Based on the insights gained from these reviews, a pillar framework to guide social media risk management in memory institutions is developed.
Findings
The proposed framework outlines the baseline components relevant for the cultural heritage sector and underlines the evolving and continual nature of these components. Elements particularly important to memory institutions are highlighted. Notably, that social risks as a risk category must be recognised. Also noted is that the conventional apolitical stance still taken by many memory institutions need to be reviewed. The importance of memory institutions to be not overly risk-averse to the point of failing to take advantage of the affordances of social media platforms, thereby stifling potential innovations around services and engagement with their users/audience is discussed.
Originality/value
This research offers an extensive review of the social media risk management literature, both scholarly and professional across different domains. The ensuing insights inform the development of a pillar framework to guide social media risk management in memory institutions. The framework outlines a baseline mapping of the governance, processes and systems components. The expectation is that this framework could be extended to account for contextual and situational requirements at more granular levels to reflect the nuances, variances and complexities that exist among different types of memory institutions and to account for varying attributes, mandates and priorities in the cultural heritage sector.
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The purpose of the study is to look at memory making and the documenting of memories, as a part of the document and information experience of women belonging to the Indian…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of the study is to look at memory making and the documenting of memories, as a part of the document and information experience of women belonging to the Indian diaspora in a leisure context.
Design/methodology/approach
A qualitative research approach was inspired by institutional ethnography, and data are collected through semi-structured interviews and by collecting comments posted on five fan fiction blogs.
Findings
Early observations show that memory making and documenting of those memories is a part of the document experience of the research participants. It also points to the role of social interactions in that experience as well as the recording of one's document experience in the making or deriving of document meaning.
Originality/value
This study aims to contribute toward conceptual growth in the area of information and document experience. It also aims to address a gap in the literature that looks at cultural memory evocation and how it is documented, as well as looking at the interplay between affordances of new media, memory making and documentary practices especially with respect to virtual communities. And when looked at through the prism of migration and leisure, it can be even more interesting.
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In their review of research on organisational memory, Walsh and Ungson argue that the extant representations of the concept are fragmented and underdeveloped. It is argued that…
Abstract
In their review of research on organisational memory, Walsh and Ungson argue that the extant representations of the concept are fragmented and underdeveloped. It is argued that this is due, at least in part, to the dominance of psychological models of memory based on the individual which are employed by organisational memory system designers. In this article it is argued that the development of a more social psychological theory of memory not only helps us understand the roots of the present confusion surrounding the concept of organisational memory, but it also enables the development of a more coherent theoretical model to guide research on the transformational effects of computer‐based information systems on organisational memory.
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