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How Societies RememberBy Paul Connerton

• Presentation by
• Amy Milligan
• Ron Gorda

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Earlier Research on Memory

• Inscribed Texts and Traditions
• Individual Memory Study
• Social Memory Study

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Memory Reliance

• Personal Memory
• Cognitive Memory
• Habit Memory

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Connerton and Memory

• Cultural not individual process
• Incorporated rather than inscribed
• Defines culture
• Establishes order
• Perpetuates and sustains the culture

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Memory Time

• Interconnection between past and present
• Both are interdependent
• Establishes patterns of perception and behavior

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Memory and Society

• Connects inhabitants of a society
• Defines the societies purpose
• Establish social order within that society
• Becomes its history, usually through replacement
• Past dictates present perceptions and actions
• Sustains society through repetition and
  transmission
• Can be revised over time

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Exemplephied by

• Rituals or ceremonies
• Bodily practices

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Historic Examples

• French Revolution
• Rituals Public Events
• Bodily Practices Fashions
• Third Reich
• Religion
• Jews
• Christians
• Muslims

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French RevolutionRituals - Public Events
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French RevolutionBodily Practices - Fashions
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Social and Political Research

• Maurice Halbwachs
• Maurice Bloch
• R.A. Rappaport
• David Efron
• Thomas Mann

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Social and Political Research

• M. Oakeshot
• Marcel Proust
• M. Sahlins
• P. Winch
• D. Sudnow

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Correlation to Knowledge Structures

• People as Knowledge Structures through the study
  of
• Inscribed Texts and Traditions
• People
• Rituals and Ceremonies
• Bodily Practices
• Can then Derive
• Group
• Culture, Social Structure and Politics
• Motivations or Actions
• Logic

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Reviews

• Adams, V. (1990). How Societies Remember
  (review). Sociological Review, 38, 790-794.
• Separates habit, cognitive and social memory.
• Dismisses anthropological research on habits and
  bodily practices
• Kumar, K. (1990). How Societies Remember
  (review). Sociology, 24, 568-569.
• Loose ends
• Bodily practices habit memory importance

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Question 1

• How do these principals apply to our past
  treatment of the American Indian?

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Question 2

• How do these principals apply to cults and other
  radical groups?

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Question 3

• Do you feel that your personal actions are based
  upon Connertons observations? What is based on
  Social Memory? What is based on Individual Memory?

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Question 4

• Can you think of other examples of habit memory
  that may perpetuate social memory?

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Question 5

• Do you agree that the form of a ritual or
  ceremony is more important than the content?

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Question 5

• If social memory is plastic and changeable, then
  what is being perpetuated by habit memory? Is it
  only the feeling of community and connection to
  the larger group?