Content analysis of living historical memory around the world: Terrorization of the Anglosphere, and national foundations of hope in developing societies

Abstract

Recently, researchers have endeavored to extend cultural perspectives of collective remembering by examining communicative or living historical memory (collective memories that emerge from informal communication between ordinary people). The current study examined the content and subjective evaluation of living historical memory from open-ended nominations of historical events provided by samples from 39 societies. Results showed that Western societies were dominated by living memories of terrorism, reflecting a distinctly negative climate. By contrast, many developing societies displayed a more positive climate in living memory that was rooted in events related to their nation’s foundation. The current study opens up avenues for conceptualizing the role of collective remembering in shaping emotional climates that influence (or may be part of) national political culture.

Pursuing Historical Truth: The Discourse of History Teachers in Teaching the History of 30 September Movement in Indonesia

“…is kind of historical memory comes up with a specific situation in which people recall their historical knowledge and memory for particular reasons and purposes, such as pursuing the truth. In this situation, the works of historians are being represented by the people as their practical past accompanied by some specific interest [45]. According to this categorization, history textbooks can be categorized as a form of historical past that could not be associated directly with the historical events in the past.…”

Implications of a Psychological Approach to Collective Remembering: Social Representations as Cultural Ground for Interpreting Survey and Experimental Results

“…Drawing from the same multinational data set, the overall results of which are reported in Liu et al (2021) and Choi et al (2021), is a study from Finland, another European country that had a difficult relationship with the Soviet Union for significant parts of the 20th century. But as a Scandinavian country, Finland did not experience the same level of overall historical trauma over the course of recent centuries as Hungary.…”

“…Drawing from the same multinational data set, the overall results of which are reported in Liu et al. (2021) and Choi et al. (2021), is a study from Finland, another European country that had a difficult relationship with the Soviet Union for significant parts of the 20th century.…”

If the past weighs on the present, then the present also weighs on the past: Collective remembering as an open system for human science

“…Intriguing is Ionescu et al's (2021) idea that the societal salience of the populist Yellow Vest Protest Movement in France might have had an impact on their results for leftists. Interpretively, events such as 9/11 for United States (Huddy & Feldman, 2011) and its involvement in two decades of futile conflict in the Middle East afterward as well as the Yellow Vest Movement and other protest movements in France might form part of societal anomie, or at least contribute to forming the emotional climate of society (Choi et al, 2021;De Rivera & P aez, 2007). This idea would be consistent with a broader approach to collective remembering that sees it as an important part of the political culture of a democratic society (as defined by Almond & Verba, 1963).…”

“…Unlike most important concepts in psychology, collective remembering can only be understood and realised as an open system (Bhaskar, 1975(Bhaskar, /2008: with widely distributed knowledge and beliefs regularly coming into being as new collective memories (e.g., the impact of 9/ 11 on Western, especially English-speaking societies; see Choi et al, 2021), even as others are forgotten, fade into insignificance, and become hidden resources that only implicitly affect behaviour (Xie et al, 2021). In this open system, the narration of incoming events, such as the epoch-making calamities of World Wars I and II , and the emotional climate and political agenda of society at present, can rewrite history (Hobsbawm & Ranger, 1983).…”