Memory in Mind and Culture

Provides answers about human memory and its role in making us who we are and societies who they are.

Pascal Boyer (Edited by), James V. Wertsch (Edited by)

9780521760782, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 8 June 2009

332 pages, 10 b/w illus. 8 tables
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.2 cm, 0.56 kg

"....This volume contains a fascinating collection of essays on individual and collective memory, mostly from the field of psychology, and raises the prospect of fruitful conversations on the processes of memory formation between cognitive psychologists and neurologists on the one hand and anthropologists and historians on the other.... the structure of the book itself creates the framework for a coherent narrative and a cumulative argument.... well written, and accessible, and the volume develops its arguments in part because the essays are remarkably well integrated and build on one another.... The volume is also fortunate to have included contributions from two of the finest historians of memory, David W. Blight and Jay S. Winter, authors of several memory studies of the American Civil War and the First World War, respectively.... the essays here are rich with potential insights for historians...."
– William Van Arragon, The King's University College, Canadian Journal of History

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 organised 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, emphasising 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.

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.

Subject Areas: Cognition & cognitive psychology [JMR], Psychology [JM], Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography [JHMC], Anthropology [JHM]