Memory in Mind and Culture

Memory in Mind and Culture

This text introduces students, scholars, and interested educated readers to the issues of human memory broadly considered, encompassing individual memory, collective remembering by societies, and the construction of history. The book is organized around several major questions: How do memories construct our past? How do we build shared collective memories? How does memory shape history? This volume presents a special perspective, emphasizing the role of memory processes in the construction of self-identity, of shared cultural norms and concepts, and of historical awareness. Although the results are fairly new and the techniques suitably modern, the vision itself is of course related to the work of such precursors as Frederic Bartlett and Aleksandr Luria, who in very different ways represent the starting point of a serious psychology of human culture.

Pascal Boyer is Henry Luce Professor of Individual and Collective Memory, departments of psychology and anthropology, at Washington University in St. Louis. He studied philosophy and anthropology at the universities of Paris and Cambridge, where he did his graduate work with Professor Jack Goody, on memory constraints on the transmission of oral literature. He has done anthropological fieldwork in Cameroon on the transmission of the Fang oral epics and on Fang traditional religion. Since then, he has worked mostly on the experimental study of cognitive capacities underlying cultural transmission. After teaching in Cambridge, San Diego, Lyon, and Santa Barbara, Boyer moved to his present position at the departments of anthropology and psychology at Washington University, St. Louis.

James V. Wertsch is Professor in Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. After finishing his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1975, Wertsch was a postdoctoral Fellow in Moscow at the USSR Academy of Sciences and Moscow State University. His research is concerned with language, thought, and culture, with a special focus on collective memory and national identity. Wertsch is the author of more than two hundred publications appearing in a dozen languages. These include the volumes Voices of the Mind (1991), Mind as Action (1998), and Voices of Collective Remembering (2002).

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Pascal Boyer

Washington University

James V. Wertsch

Washington University

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CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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© Cambridge University Press 2009

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2009

Printed in the United States of America

A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data

Memory in mind and culture / edited by Pascal Boyer, James V. Wertsch.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-521-76078-2 (hardback) – ISBN 978-0-521-75892-5 (pbk.)
1. Memory – Social aspects. 2. Collective memory. 3. Recollection (Psychology)
4. Cognition and culture. 5. Oral tradition. I. Boyer, Pascal.
II. Wertsch, James V. III. Title.
BF 378.S65M475 2009
153.1′2–dc22  2009007297

ISBN 978-0-521-76078-2 hardback
ISBN 978-0-521-75892-5 paperback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Information regarding prices, travel timetables, and other factual information given in this work are correct at the time of first printing, but Cambridge University Press does not guarantee the accuracy of such information thereafter.

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Contents

List of Contributors	vii
Part I:   In Mind, Culture, and History: A Special Perspective	1
1         What Are Memories For? Functions of Recall in Cognition and Culture Pascal Boyer	3
Part II:  How Do Memories Construct Our Past?	29
2         Networks of Autobiographical Memories Helen L. Williams & Martin A. Conway	33
3         Cultural Life Scripts and Individual Life Stories Dorthe Berntsen & Annette Bohn	62
4         Specificity of Memory: Implications for Individual and Collective Remembering Daniel L. Schacter, Angela H. Gutchess, & Elizabeth A. Kensinger	83
Part III: How Do We Build Shared Collective Memories?	113
5         Collective Memory James V. Wertsch	117
6         The Role of Repeated Retrieval in Shaping Collective Memory Henry L. Roediger III, Franklin M. Zaromb, & Andrew C. Butler	138
7         Making History: Social and Psychological Processes Underlying Collective Memory James W. Pennebaker & Amy L. Gonzales	171
8         How Does Collective Memory Create a Sense of the Collective? Alan J. Lambert, Laura Nesse Scherer, Chad Rogers, & Larry Jacoby	194
Part IV:  How Does Memory Shape History?	219
9         Historical Memories Craig W. Blatz & Michael Ross	223
10        The Memory Boom: Why and Why Now? David W. Blight	238
11        Historians and Sites of Memory Jay Winter	252
Part V:   How Does Memory Shape Culture?	269
12        Oral Traditions as Collective Memories: Implications for a General Theory of Individual and Collective Memory David C. Rubin	273
13        Cognitive Predispositions and Cultural Transmission Pascal Boyer	288
Index	321

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Contributors

Dorthe Berntsen Department of Psychology, University of Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark

Craig W. Blatz Deptarment of Psychology, University of Wa terloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada

David W. Blight Department of History, Yale University, New Haven, CT

Annette Bohn Department of Psychology, University of Aa rhus, Nobelparken, Aarhus C, Denmark

Pascal Boyer Departments of Psychology and Anthropology, Washington University, St. Louis, MO

Andrew C. Butler Department of Psychology, Washington University, St. Louis, MO

Martin A. Conway Institute of Psychological Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds, Great Britain

Amy L. Gonzales Department of Communication, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY

Angela H. Gutchess Department of Psychology, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA

Larry Jacoby Department of Psychology, Washington University, St. Louis, MO

Elizabeth A. Kensinger Department of Psychology, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA

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Alan J. Lambert Department of Psychology, Washington University, St. Louis, MO

James W. Pennebaker Department of Psychology, University of Texas, Austin, TX

Henry L. Roediger Department of Psychology, Washington University, St. Louis, MO

Chad Rogers Department of Psychology, Washington University, St. Louis, MO

Michael Ross Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada

David C. Rubin Department of Psychology, Duke University, Durham, NC

Daniel L. Schacter Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

Laura Nesse Scherer Department of Psychology, Washington University, St. Louis, MO

James V. Wertsch Department of Anthropology, Washington University, St. Louis, MO

Helen L. Williams Institute of Psychological Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds, Great Britain

Jay Winter Department of History, Yale University, New Haven, CT

Franklin M. Zaromb Department of Psychology, Washington University, St. Louis, MO

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