"Collective memory" is an umbrella term for different formats of memory. Interactive and social memory are both formats that are embodied, grounded in lived experience that vanish with their carriers. The manifestations of political and cultural memory, on the other hand, are grounded on the more durable carriers of external symbols and representations and can be re-embodied and transmitted from one generation to another. The relation between "history" and "memory" has itself a history that has evolved over time, passing through (...) three stages: 1) the identity between history and memory, 2) the polarization between history and memory, and 3) the interaction between history and memory. Where history and memory are polarized, the historian assumes an intellectual and ethical function and concentrates on the lacunae of national memory thereby creating a countermemory. However, that there are certain contexts in which history and memory are also conflated in democratic nation states. If we look at the sector of public historical education we can observe a similar self-enforcing relationship between history, memory, identity, and power. In this context, history becomes the stuff of which political memory, identity, and myth is made of.Forms of participation in collective memory differ widely between informal social memory and the more organized format of political memory. Participation in social memory is always varied because it is based on lived experience and linked to autobiographical memory, while collective participation in national memory, in both totalitarian and democratic states, on effective symbols and rites that enhance emotions of empathy and identification. In the discourse of memory research. the term "myth" is used to distinguish between the object of historical knowledge on the one hand and collectively remembered events on the other. Myth in this sense of "collectively remembered history" is meant as a neutral description. Over the years, a change in style of history textbooks can be observed, which may be characterized by the move from monumental to selfcritical narratives and from isolationist narratives to those that connect to others in a transnational and global perspectives. Criteria are emerging for a critical evaluation of national narratives and political memory. (shrink)

From the Victorian era to our own, critics of Herbert Spencer have portrayed his science‐based philosophical system as irrelevant to the concerns of practicing scientists. Yet, as a number of scholars have recently argued, an extraordinary range of reformist and experimental projects across the human and life sciences took their bearings from Spencer's work. This essay examines Spencerian science as practiced by the biologist, sociologist, and town planner Patrick Geddes (1854–1932). Through a close examination of his experimental natural history of (...) the late 1870s and early 1880s, his wider writings on the evolutionary process in the 1880s, and his efforts later in that decade to improve the slums of Edinburgh, this essay reveals Geddes's deep, unifying, and energizing commitment to Spencer's program. Recapturing that commitment can not only help historians rethink Spencerian science as practice but also suggest ways of overcoming the dichotomy between elite ideas and practical activity that bedevils much contemporary historiography of science. (shrink)

Much has been written about the relationship between biology and social science during the early twentieth century. However, discussion is often drawn toward a particular conception of eugenics, which tends to obscure our understanding of not only the wide range of intersections between biology and social science during the period but also their impact on subsequent developments. This paper draws attention to one of those intersections: the British economist and social reformer William Beveridge’s controversial efforts to establish a Department of (...) Social Biology at London School of Economics during the 1920s and 1930s. Featuring a fully equipped laboratory headed by a leading geneticist, the Department of Social Biology was Beveridge’s attempt to “cross-fertilise” biology and social science and, in so doing, take the ideological heat out of social scientific, in particular economic, methods of investigation. Exploring why Beveridge’s project failed and throwing light on its long-term legacies, this paper considers what we can learn from the short-lived Department of Social Biology. (shrink)

Is, as Hamlet once feared, the time out of joint? What has happened to our relation to the past and the future? The past has returned in various shapes: as nostalgia, as traumatic impact, and as historical origin or key event for the purposes of nation building. The future, meanwhile, has lost much of its glamor, too. The notion of progress and a utopian future have been eroded a growing ecological crisis. The seemingly solid moorings of our temporal orientation have (...) collapsed within the time span of a generation. In order to better understand our temporal crisis, we must start by reconstructing what has just disappeared. In this book, Aleida Assmann tracks the rise and fall of what she calls "the time regime of modernity," explaining what we have both gained and lost in this profound transformation of our cultural values and premises. (shrink)

"Identity" has become a core concept of the social and cultural sciences. Bringing together perspectives from sociology, anthropology, psychology, history, and literary criticism, this book offers a comprehensive and critical overview on how this concept is currently used and how it relates to memory and constructions of historical meaning.

The concept of ‘femicide’ was first formulated in 1992 by Jill Radford and Diana Russell; nonetheless, it has not been widely discussed in feminist philosophical arenas.This situation has led to a narrow understanding and/or misunderstanding of the concept. For example, it is often applied to a phenomenon mistakenly assumed to occur “only in third world countries” or said to essentialize women. Through a new-materialist methodology, this paper contributes to the discussion on this concept from a feminist theoretical perspective.

How do people maintain their humanity during wars? Despite its importance, this question receives scant scholarly attention, perhaps because of the overwhelming aspect of war. The generally accepted wisdom is that wars bring out the worst in us, pitting us against one another. "War is hell," William Tecumseh Sherman famously noted, and even wars clearly designated "just" nonetheless inflict massive destruction and cruelty. Since ethics is concerned with discovering what takes us to a morally superior place, one conducive to human (...) flourishing and happiness, studying what helps people survive wartime trauma becomes an extremely valuable enterprise. A Darkling Plain thus fills an important scholarly void, analyzing wartime stories that reveal much about our capacity to process trauma, heal wounds, reclaim lost spirits, and derive meaning and purpose from the most horrific of personal events. (shrink)

Der 9. Band der Reihe behandelt das Thema der Identität, allerdings von einer ganz anderen Seite, von seinem Gegenbegriff der Verwandlung aus. Es geht dabei um die Frage: Was ist der Mensch? Ist er der Verwandlungskünstler, Rollenspieler, Maskenträger gegenüber der Welt der Tiere, die sich immer treu bleiben und immer dieselben sind? Hat er sich im Laufe der Kulturgeschichte vom archaischen Menschen, der als Schamane Tiergestalt annimmt, als Benandante zum Werwolf wird, im Ritus ein Leopard ist, zum modernen Menschen entwickelt, (...) der sich festlegen muß und festgelegt wird auf eine Identität, die ihm zum stahlhart unentrinnbaren Gehäuse wird? Und welche Rolle spielt die Schrift in diesem Prozeß? Bedeutet der Gegensatz von Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit zugleich den Übergang von der labilen zur stabilen, zugeschriebenen und festgeschriebenen Identität? Diese und andere Fragen werden an archaischen Gesellschaften und Werken der Hochkultur ebenso erörtert wie an popkulturellen Phänomenen der Gegenwart. (shrink)

Dans le cadre de la construction du corpus PhraseoRoChe, un corpus diachronique rassemblant des romans de chevalerie du 13e au 17e siècle, cet article s’intéresse aux performances de différents analyseurs (étiqueteurs, lemmatiseurs, parseurs en dépendances) entrainés sur des états de langue connexes allant de l’ancien français au moyen français et au français moderne. Nous étudions ainsi la possibilité d’étendre ces analyseurs au-delà des états de langues précis sur lesquels ils ont été entrainés, en s’appuyant notamment sur les divergences entre analyseurs (...) pour identifier les annotations les moins fiables, et ainsi prioriser les interventions manuelles de correction / validation des annotations automatiques. Nous étudions également les possibilités offertes par un traitement superficiel de modernisation graphique pour tirer parti d’un analyseur moderne appliqué à des états de langue anciens. (shrink)