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Remembering together: Individual and social aspects of collective memory

Abstract:

Collective memory has been one of the main issues in discussion in national and international contexts. This field of study has been growing in the last decades joining academics from different areas such as psychology, sociology, history and political sciences. Collective memory is usually used by political figures but rarely studied by organizations. This chapter offers a comprehensive review of studies on collective memory to present this field to a broader public. Understanding its functioning may help individuals and organizations to position themselves in the social arena, to perceive the uses of past made by political institutions and the biases people usually exhibit on the recalling of social events. We present in the chapter different perspectives on collective memory: the psychology of memory showing how individual memory is influenced by the social contexts; the formation and maintenance of commemoration rituals and archives, as well as their relation with memory and history; the generation belonging as an important bias in collective remembering; the recalling of historical events; the construction of knowledge about the world and the uses of past in contexts of conflict. In the end, we present a brief conclusion reviewing the main topics discussed and reflecting on future lines of research.