Memory And Identity In The Learned World

Memory and Identity in the Learned World offers a detailed and varied account of community formation in the early modern world of learning and science. The book traces how collective identity, institutional memory and modes of remembrance helped to shape learned and scientific communities. The case studies in this book analyse how learned communities and individuals presented and represented themselves, for example in letters, biographies, histories, journals, opera omnia, monuments, academic travels and memorials. By bringing together the perspectives of historians of literature, scholarship, universities, science, and art, this volume studies knowledge communities by looking at the centrality of collective identity and memory in their formations and reformations. Contributors: Lieke van Deinsen, Karl Enenkel, Constance Hardesty, Paul Hulsenboom, Dirk van Miert, Alan Moss, Richard Kirwan, Koen Scholten, Floris Solleveld, and Esther M. Villegas de la Torre.

'This volume of one of the most comprehensive in the field. Its three themes are critical for the study of culture and globalization with its condensation of space, time and memory. Exploring the intersection between these three processes, the essays are learned, deeply researched and insightful, and the comparative range is impressive. The volume is certain to become a standard reference text for scholars and the general reader alike' - Professor Stuart Hall, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, The Open University Heritage, memory and identity are closely connected keywords of our time, each endowed with considerable rhetorical power. Different human groups define certain objects and practices as 'heritage'; they envision heritage to reflect some form of collective memory, either lived or imagined; and they combine both to construct cultural identities. Today, the three terms raise conjoined issues of practice, policy and politics in an increasingly globalized world. Bringing together a truly global range of scholars, this volume explores heritage, memory and identity through a diverse set of subjects, including heritage sites, practices of memorialization, museums, sites of contestation, and human rights.

This challenging book, with excellent contributions from international social scientists, focuses on the link between body and memory that specifically refers to the use of digital technologies. Neuroscientists know very well that human beings automatically and unconsciously organize their experience in their bodies into spatial units whose confines are established by changes in location, temporality and the interactive elements that determine it. Our memories might be less reliable than those of the average computer, but they are just as capacious, much more flexible, and even more user-friendly. The aim of the present book is to outline, by the body, what we know of the sociology of memory. The authors and editors believe that an analysis at the sociological level will prove valuable in throwing light on accounts of human behavior at the interpersonal and social level, and will play an important role in our capacity to understand the neurobiological factors that underpin the various types of memory. This book is an ideal resource for advanced and postgraduate students in social sciences, as well as practitioners in the field of Information and Communication technologies. Scholarly and accessible in tone, Learning from Memory: Body, Memory and Technology in a Globalizing World will be read and enjoyed by members of the general public and the professional audience alike.

This book bridges theoretical gaps that exist between the meta-concepts of memory, place and identity by positioning its lens on the emplaced practices of commemoration and the remembrance of war and conflict. This book examines how diverse publics relate to their wartime histories through engagements with everyday collective memories, in differing places. Specifically addressing questions of place-making, displacement and identity, contributions shed new light on the processes of commemoration of war in everyday urban façades and within generations of families and national communities. Contributions seek to clarify how we connect with memories and places of war and conflict. The spatial and narrative manifestations of attempts to contextualise wartime memories of loss, trauma, conflict, victory and suffering are refracted through the roles played by emotion and identity construction in the shaping of post-war remembrances. This book offers a multidisciplinary perspective, with insights from history, memory studies, social psychology, cultural and urban geography, to contextualise memories of war and their ‘use’ by national governments, perpetrators, victims and in family histories.

In today’s context of rapid socio-political changes, with deepening ethnic and religious conflicts on the one hand, and a diminishing feeling of identification with the community on the other, reflection on the idea of “solidarity” is very much necessary. This book provides answers to the following questions: “What is the idea of solidarity today?”; “How can it be defined?”; “How has it evolved over recent decades?”; “How does it manifest itself in social life?”; “How is it reflected in the arts?”; and, above all, “How does it relate to collective memory and identity?” With this outline of topic areas in mind, this volume brings together essays analysing various aspects of the concept of solidarity: namely, philosophical, social, political, cultural, historical, psychological and artistic. The book’s interdisciplinary character is testament to the complexity of perspectives and contexts in which the phenomenon of solidarity can be described today in the social sciences and the humanities. As such, it contains chapters devoted to the history of ideas; international relations and political conflicts in the modern world; national minorities; racism and anti-Semitism; and twentieth-century crimes against humanity, as well as psychological case studies, experimental research on mechanisms of social behaviour, and analyses of works of art. The contributors to this volume represent academic centres from Africa, the Americas, Asia and Europe. They are deeply concerned with fighting against any forms of discrimination, and, as such, their respective chapters mark a contribution to the constant search for the improvement of the fate of societies and individuals in different corners of the globe. Consequently, this book has an ethical dimension, in addition to its cognitive side, inspiring its readers to undertake efforts to help victims of social exclusion, persecution and crime.

A truly historical document that leaves for posterity the intellectual and spiritual teachings of His Holiness Pope John Paul II A truly historical document, Memory and Identity contains Pope John Paul II's personal thoughts on some of the most challenging issues and events of his turbulent times. Pope for over 26 years, he was one of the world's greatest communicators and this moving book provides a unique insight into his intellectual and spiritual journey and pastoral experience. Each chapter suggests the answer to a question which either exercised his mind or which he provoked in discussion with laymen and priests. Using the encounters at his summer residence of Castel Gandolfo where conversations took place with leading intellectuals - philosophers as well as theologians - Pope John Paul II addressed in his book many of the questions which arose from these discussions. Here he leaves for posterity an intellectual and spiritual testament in an attempt to seek the answer to defining problems that vex our lives.

This multidisciplinary volume documents the resurrection of the importance of narrative to the study of individuals and groups and argues that narrative may become a lingua franca of future debates in the human sciences.

Memories establish a connection between a collective and individual past, between origins, heritage, and history. Those who have left their places of birth to make homes elsewhere are familiar with the question, "Where do you come from?" and respond in innumerable well-rehearsed ways. Diasporas construct racialized, sexualized, gendered, and oppositional subjectivities and shape the cosmopolitan intellectual commitment of scholars. The diasporic individual often has a double consciousness, a privileged knowledge and perspective that is consonant with postmodernity and globalization. The essays in this volume reflect on the movements of people and cultures in the present day, when physical, social, and mental borders and boundaries are being challenged and sometimes successfully dismantled. The contributors - from a variety of disciplinary perspectives - discuss the diasporic experiences of ethnic and racial groups living in Canada from their perspective, including the experiences of South Asians, Iranians, West Indians, Chinese, and Eritreans. Diaspora, Memory, and Identity is an exciting and innovative collection of essays that examines the nuanced development of theories of Diaspora, subjectivity, double-consciousness, gender and class experiences, and the nature of home.