Outline

1. Types of Nation Building2. Memory and Nation3. Collective Memory – National Memory4. 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 Building2. Memory and Nation3. Collective Memory – National Memory4. 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 Building2. Memory and Nation3. Collective Memory – National Memory4. 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

Emile Durkheim, 1858-1917

Maurice Halbwachs

1877-1945

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.)

From: Voices of Collective Remembering, Universitetet i Oslo, May 2004, by James V. Wertsch, Washington University in St. LouisJames V. Wertsch, Washington University in St. Louis

But… is this dichotomy true? What are the functions of history and historical research in nation building?

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

Memory and Power

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 Building2. Memory and Nation3. Collective Memory – National Memory4. 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