This text introduces students, scholars, and interested educated readers to the issues of human memory broadly considered, encompassing both 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.
Contents
Part I. In Mind, Culture and History: A Special Perspective: 1. What are memories for? Functions of recall in cognition and culture Pascal Boyer; Part II. How Do Memories Construct Our Past?: 2. Networks of autobiographical memories Helen L. Williams and Martin A. Conway; 3. Cultural life scripts and individual life stories Dorthe Berntsen and Annette Bohn; 4. Specificity of memory: implications for individual and collective remembering Daniel L. Schacter, Angela H. Gutchess, and Elizabeth A. Kensinger; Part III. How Do We Build Shared Collective Memories?: 5. Collective memory James V. Wertsch; 6. The role of repeated retrieval in shaping collective memory Henry L. Roediger III, Franklin M. Zaromb, and Andrew C. Butler; 7. Making history: social and psychological processes underlying collective memory James W. Pennebaker and Amy Gonzales; 8. How does collective memory create a sense of the collective? Alan Lambert, Laura Nesse, Chad Rogers, and Larry Jacoby; Part IV. How Does Memory Shape History?: 9. Historical memories Craig W. Blatz and Michael Ross; 10. The memory boom: why and why now? David W. Blight; 11. Historians and sites of memory Jay Winter; Part V. How Does Memory Shape Culture?: 12. Oral traditions as collective memories: implications for a general theory of individual and collective memory David C. Rubin; 13. Cognitive predispositions and cultural transmission Pascal Boyer.
Reviews
“Memory isn't just for psychologists, or neuroscientists, anymore. Psychologists learned a lot about memory in the 100 years after Ebbinghaus. Then cognitive neuropsychology and cognitive neuroscience began to connect the psychology of memory "down" to its neural substrates. The remaining task is to connect the psychology of memory "up" to the other social sciences, viewing individual memory processes, and individual memories, in the context of social and cultural structures and processes lying outside the individual. Boyer and Wertsch have done just that. In this book, their authors summarize what we already know, and initiate a new line of research that will – it is to be hoped – remind psychologists that they are social as well as biological scientists, and foster the development of a cognitive perspective within the social sciences more generally.”
—John F. Kihlstrom, University of California, Berkeley
“Having studied memory all my life I thought that I knew something about it. This outstanding collection of essays by some of the most eminent pacesetters in the emerging field of "memory studies" forcefully reminded me that there is more to memory than what one can find in the minds and brains of individuals. We are witnessing the maturation of the young field of "memory studies," and this volume provides us with a ringside seat.”
—Endel Tulving, University of Toronto
“Boyer and Wertsch present a much needed edited volume combining the most recent results of memory studies in cognitive psychology with studies in history and anthropology. The basic argument, that we need to pay attention to how memories are formed before we can discuss what they mean, is compelling. The contributors to this volume cogently discuss the impact of repeated retrieval and feedback patterns, as well as encoding and priming processes, and link them to specific instances of individual and social remembering, drawing examples from autobiographies, small-scale oral societies, as well as nation-states. This book provides a solid foundation for informed, interdisciplinary discussions on memory.”
—Lucia Volk, San Francisco State University
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