Routledge Studies in Memory and Narrative – serie

Any life story, whether a written autobiography or an oral testimony, is shaped not only by the reworkings of experience through memory and re-evaluation, but also art. Any communication has to use shared conventions not only of language itself but also the more complex expectations of 'genre': of the forms expected within a given context and type of communication.This collection of essays by internationl academics draws on a wide range of disciplines in the social sciences and the humanities to examine how far the expectations and forms of genre shape different kinds of autobiography and influence what messages they can convey. After investigating the problem of genre definition, and tracing the evolution of genre as a concept, contributors explore such issues as:* How far can we argue that what people narrate in their autobiographical stories is selected and shaped by the reportoire of genre available to them?* To what extent is oral autobiography shaped by its social and cultural context?* What is the relationship between autobiographical sources and the ethnographer?Narrative and Genre presents exciting new debates in an emerging field and will encourage international and interdisciplinary debate. Its authors and contributors are scholars from the fields of anthropology, cultural studies, literary analysis, psychoanalysis, social history, and sociology.

The globalisation of the present day world economy means that more and more people are experiencing different cultures through their work. Focusing on the real experiences of workers in Japanese transnational finance companies, this book not only throws light on this specific case, but at the same time raises timely questions and insights into the newly-emerging multicultural work experience worldwide. Japanese Bankers in the City of London reflects on contemporary discussions in sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, of individual global movement and cultural interaction.

Analysing Stasi files and interviews with one time informers, the author examines the confrontation with this legacy in united Germany. She discusses the daily machinations of the state and the motivation and justification of being an informer.

In this volume leading academics explore the relationship between the experiences of terror and helplessness, the way in which survivors remember and the representation of these memories in the language and form of their life stories.

Ranging historically from the French Revolution to the beginnings of Modernism, this book examines the significance of memory in an era of furious social change. Through an examination of literature, history and science the authors explore the theme of memory as a tool of social progression. This book offers a fresh theoretical understanding of the period and a wealth of empirical material of use to the historian, literature student or social psychologist.

This volume brilliantly advances our understanding of the use of narrative in the social sciences. It brings together contemporary work on narrative theory and methods and presents a fascinating range of case-studies, from Princess Diana's Panorama interview to the memoirs of the wives of US nuclear scientists.

This book examines the roots of contemporary environmental consciousness and action in terms of both popular experience and tradition. A wide range of geographical and thematic case-studies explore the myth, tradition and collective memory that shape our environmental thought.Containing a wealth of empirical source material, this book will be invaluable for sociologists and historians alike.

War memory and commemoration have had increasingly high profiles in public and academic debates in recent years. This volume examines some of the social changes which have led to this development, among them the passing of the two World Wars from survivor into cultural memory. Focusing on the politics of war memory and commemoration, the book illuminates the struggle to install particular memories at the centre of a cultural world, and offers an extensive argument about how the politics of commemoration practices should be understood.

Between 1977 and 1985, some 20,000 Ethiopian Jews left their homes in Ethiopia and - motivated by an ancient dream of returning to the land of their ancestors, 'Yerussalem' - embarked on a secret and highly traumatic exodus to Israel. Due to various political circumstances they had to leave their homes in haste, go a long way on foot through unknown country, and stay for a period of one or two years in refugee camps, until they were brought to Israel. The difficult conditions of the journey included racial tensions, attacks by bandits, night travel over mountains, incarceration, illness and death. A fifth of the group did not survive the journey.This interdisciplinary, ground-breaking book focuses on the experience of this journey, its meaning for the people who made it, and its relation to the initial encounter with Israeli society. The author argues that powerful processes occur on such journeys that affect the individual and community in life-changing ways, including their initial encounter with and adaptation to their new society. Analysing the psychosocial impact of the journey, he examines the relations between coping and meaning, trauma and culture, and discusses personal development and growth.

This book investigates the role that the visual and performing arts play in our experience and understanding of the past. Expanding upon longstanding concerns in cultural history about the relation of text and image, the book highlights the distinction between enactive and cognitive memory and the implications of this for artists and their publics.

This inter-disciplinary volume demonstrates, from a range of perspectives, the complex cultural work and struggles over meaning that lie at the heart of what we call memory.In the last decade, a focus on memory in the human sciences has encouraged new approaches to the study of the past. As the humanities and social sciences have put into question their own claims to objectivity, authority and universality, memory has appeared to offer a way of engaging with knowledge of the past as inevitably partial, subjective and local. At the same time, memory and memorial practices have become sites of contestation, and the politics of memory are increasingly prominent.

A focus on memory has come to prominence across a wide range of disciplines. History, literature, philosophy, anthropology, and cultural studies have placed memory at the heart of their interrogations of subjectivity, narrative, time and imagination. At the same time, memory has emerged as a central theme and preoccupation in popular literature, film and television, and the emergence of memory as an academic theme cannot be separated from its prominence in the wider culture. This volume represents, explores and interrogates the current developments, engaging directly with the place of memory in culture, and with memory's meaning's and history.

For a period of over seventy years after the 1917 revolutions in Russia, talking about the past, either political or personal, became dangerous. The new policy of glasnost at the end of the 1980s resulted in a flood of reminiscence, almost nightly on television and more formally collected by new Russian oral history groups and western researchers. This book is a fascinating collection of life stories and family history interview material collected by the editors and two Russian groups of interviewers.

A focus on memory has come to prominence across a wide range of disciplines. History, literature, philosophy, anthropology, and cultural studies have placed memory at the heart of their interrogations of subjectivity, narrative, time and imagination. At the same time, memory has emerged as a central theme and preoccupation in popular literature, film and television, and the emergence of memory as an academic theme cannot be separated from its prominence in the wider culture. This volume represents, explores and interrogates the current developments, engaging directly with the place of memory in culture, and with memory's meaning's and history.

This book investigates the role that the visual and performing arts play in our experience and understanding of the past. Expanding upon longstanding concerns in cultural history about the relation of text and image, the book highlights the distinction between enactive and cognitive memory and the implications of this for artists and their publics.

This book examines the roots of contemporary environmental consciousness and action in terms of both popular experience and tradition. A wide range of geographical and thematic case-studies explore the myth, tradition and collective memory that shape our environmental thought.Containing a wealth of empirical source material, this book will be invaluable for sociologists and historians alike.

This inter-disciplinary volume demonstrates, from a range of perspectives, the complex cultural work and struggles over meaning that lie at the heart of what we call memory.In the last decade, a focus on memory in the human sciences has encouraged new approaches to the study of the past. As the humanities and social sciences have put into question their own claims to objectivity, authority and universality, memory has appeared to offer a way of engaging with knowledge of the past as inevitably partial, subjective and local. At the same time, memory and memorial practices have become sites of contestation, and the politics of memory are increasingly prominent.

Any life story, whether a written autobiography or an oral testimony, is shaped not only by the reworkings of experience through memory and re-evaluation, but also art. Any communication has to use shared conventions not only of language itself but also the more complex expectations of 'genre': of the forms expected within a given context and type of communication.This collection of essays by internationl academics draws on a wide range of disciplines in the social sciences and the humanities to examine how far the expectations and forms of genre shape different kinds of autobiography and influence what messages they can convey. After investigating the problem of genre definition, and tracing the evolution of genre as a concept, contributors explore such issues as:* How far can we argue that what people narrate in their autobiographical stories is selected and shaped by the reportoire of genre available to them?* To what extent is oral autobiography shaped by its social and cultural context?* What is the relationship between autobiographical sources and the ethnographer?Narrative and Genre presents exciting new debates in an emerging field and will encourage international and interdisciplinary debate. Its authors and contributors are scholars from the fields of anthropology, cultural studies, literary analysis, psychoanalysis, social history, and sociology.

Analysing Stasi files and interviews with one time informers, the author examines the confrontation with this legacy in united Germany. She discusses the daily machinations of the state and the motivation and justification of being an informer.

In this volume leading academics explore the relationship between the experiences of terror and helplessness, the way in which survivors remember and the representation of these memories in the language and form of their life stories.

Ranging historically from the French Revolution to the beginnings of Modernism, this book examines the significance of memory in an era of furious social change. Through an examination of literature, history and science the authors explore the theme of memory as a tool of social progression. This book offers a fresh theoretical understanding of the period and a wealth of empirical material of use to the historian, literature student or social psychologist.

This volume brilliantly advances our understanding of the use of narrative in the social sciences. It brings together contemporary work on narrative theory and methods and presents a fascinating range of case-studies, from Princess Diana's Panorama interview to the memoirs of the wives of US nuclear scientists.

War memory and commemoration have had increasingly high profiles in public and academic debates in recent years. This volume examines some of the social changes which have led to this development, among them the passing of the two World Wars from survivor into cultural memory. Focusing on the politics of war memory and commemoration, the book illuminates the struggle to install particular memories at the centre of a cultural world, and offers an extensive argument about how the politics of commemoration practices should be understood.

For a period of over seventy years after the 1917 revolutions in Russia, talking about the past, either political or personal, became dangerous. The new policy of glasnost at the end of the 1980s resulted in a flood of reminiscence, almost nightly on television and more formally collected by new Russian oral history groups and western researchers. This book is a fascinating collection of life stories and family history interview material collected by the editors and two Russian groups of interviewers.

The globalisation of the present day world economy means that more and more people are experiencing different cultures through their work. Focusing on the real experiences of workers in Japanese transnational finance companies, this book not only throws light on this specific case, but at the same time raises timely questions and insights into the newly-emerging multicultural work experience worldwide. Japanese Bankers in the City of London reflects on contemporary discussions in sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, of individual global movement and cultural interaction.