Collective Memory
The theory of how social groups remember the past collectively, and how shared memory is framed, transmitted, and transformed over time.
Definition
Collective memory is the shared representation of the past constructed, maintained, and transmitted by a social group through its institutions, practices, and cultural frameworks.
Scope
This topic covers the conceptual foundations of memory studies: Halbwachs's claim that memory is socially framed, the distinction between communicative and cultural memory, and the debates over whether 'collective memory' names a real social phenomenon or a metaphor. It addresses how groups select, organize, and reproduce their representations of the past.
Core questions
- In what sense can a group, rather than only an individual, be said to remember?
- What social frameworks make remembering possible?
- How does cultural memory differ from the living memory of contemporaries?
- Is collective memory a literal social process or a metaphor for aggregated individual memories?
Key theories
- Social frameworks of memory
- Halbwachs argued that individuals remember only within the frameworks provided by social groups, so that even personal recollection is socially structured.
- Communicative and cultural memory
- Jan Assmann distinguished communicative memory, carried in living everyday interaction across a few generations, from cultural memory, stabilized in canonical texts, rites, and monuments over the long term.
History
The concept originates with Halbwachs, a student of Durkheim and Bergson, in the 1920s. After mid-century neglect it was revived from the 1980s and elaborated by Jan and Aleida Assmann's theory of cultural memory and by a broad interdisciplinary field of social memory studies surveyed by Olick and Robbins.
Debates
- Is collective memory real or metaphorical?
- Some scholars treat collective memory as a genuine supra-individual social process, while others insist that only individuals literally remember and the collective term is a useful metaphor.
Key figures
- Maurice Halbwachs
- Jan Assmann
- Aleida Assmann
- Jeffrey Olick
Related topics
Seminal works
- halbwachs1925
- assmann1995
- olickrobbins1998
Frequently asked questions
- Who originated the concept of collective memory?
- The sociologist Maurice Halbwachs, who argued in the 1920s that memory operates within social frameworks supplied by the groups to which people belong.
- What is the difference between communicative and cultural memory?
- Communicative memory is the everyday, living memory shared among contemporaries over a few generations, whereas cultural memory is the long-term memory fixed in texts, rituals, and monuments.