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12 - Memorialisation and commemoration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Nigel C. Hunt
Affiliation:
University of Nottingham
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Summary

The purpose of this chapter is to show how memory, narratives, social discourse and history are interlinked via the remembrance of war, and how people have a psychological need and a social duty to remember those who died in past wars.

Societies have always used memorials to help them to remember past events or people. Commemoration is probably the most heavily trafficked point of intersection between history, sociology and political science (Wilson, 2005) and the place of commemoration in the construction of group, particularly national identities. Psychology also has an important role to play here, as it is concerned with the role of individual memory and how the individual fits within the social context of such events. Memorials can be instituted by the state or by private individuals; they can be public or private (e.g. Quinlan, 2005b). British war graves, instituted in their present form after the First World War, are uniform except for the message at the base, where families are permitted to add a short message (even these employ a common social discourse, with the same phrases occurring repeatedly). The graves are institutional and public. In old battlefields such as the Somme, new memorials, privately funded but in public positions, are still being erected, long after the participants in the event are dead. These are attempts to ensure that the memories of particular individuals or groups are remembered by later generations, perhaps with the fear that they are being forgotten?

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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