Collective Memory

Scholarship on collective memory from an explicit political science perspective has expanded over the last decade. This growth speaks to political dynamics unfolding across the world, as history has once again become part of political confrontations. The ongoing dispute about an acceptable name for Macedonia, the role of truth commissions in post-conflict societies, and the international tensions stemming from the memories of Japanese aggression on the Asian continent during the Asia-Pacific War illustrate that political science needs to include questions of collective memory in its analysis. Although political science’s focus on collective memory is new, it would be erroneous to believe that memory has started to shape politics only recently. The study of the societal significance of present-day representations of past narratives has a long history. Its intellectual forebears can be found notably in late-19th-century French sociology, and the topic has gained in prominence in the humanities and sociology since the 1980s and is now marching into the political sciences. This latter expansion also changes the methods and research strategies that scholarship on collective memory employs. Nevertheless, studying collective memory will remain an inherently interdisciplinary endeavor and uniquely integrates the social sciences, humanities, and natural sciences. Given the field’s quick shifts, a number of central conceptual tools retain an elasticity less common in other branches of the discipline. Meanwhile, the number of topics that can be approached through the prism of collective memory is inexhaustible. The field is therefore held together primarily by its underlying conceptual apparatus. Conceptual clarity is thus particularly relevant for a dialogue within and across the disciplines, and also to integrate the insights related to collective memory generated in political and social theory. The state of the scholarship illustrates, however, that studies of collective memory have overwhelmingly been motivated by empirical puzzles and at times continue to analyze memory as being a tangible phenomenon. While not necessarily shortcomings, many of the empirical contributions have thereby shied away from a more thorough theoretical investigation.