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- Title
Disputed Historical Memories in East Europe and Southeast Asia: Representations, Symbols and Social Practices.
- Authors
Giordano, Christian
- Abstract
At first glance, the past would seem to be the main field of research of historians who seek to reconstruct events of an earlier time as they actually occurred in previous epochs. This article, instead, shows that social anthropology, as a discipline bent on analyzing the present-time, is also steadily paying more attention to historical facts. Yet, as the article notes, this discipline essentially explores the past if ii' is socially relevant to the present, i.e., if any specific historical fact is mobilized in the here and now through the targeted use of social memory. Therefore, knowing the actors (individual or collective,) and especially their ends (not always overt), which lead them to resort to the past, is fundamental to the anthropologist. The article then examines the conflicts and tensions arising from the use of the past through disputed memories. By means of four actual cases - Transylvania, Riga, Angkor Wat and Bulgarian Macedonia - the article shows that memory, contrary to current epistemological approaches that tend to see only its positive aspects, can become a highly efficient and dangerous tool, which can unleash severe phenomena of symbolic, structural and even physical violence. Finally, the article indicates that the reconciliation of disputed memories does not necessarily entail that the actors in conflict must share them.
- Subjects
ASIA; GERMANY; GIN; MEMORY; MANAGEMENT information systems; ETHNOLOGY
- Publication
Lithuanian Ethnology: Studies in Social Anthropology & Ethnology / Lietuvos Etnologija: Socialines Antropologijos ir Etnologijos Studijos, 2008, Issue 8, p11
- ISSN
1392-4028
- Publication type
Article