The question of how the social sciences should approach collective memory has challenged researchers for some time. Henri Bergson and Maurice Halbwachs, along with the nowadays neglected contributions of Richard Semon, Théodule Ribot, and Ewald Hering, discussed the relationship between individual and collective memory, its dynamic or stagnant character, and the tension between its enabling or constraining forces. Corning and Schuman inherit this conceptual pedigree and focus moreover on studying generational formations.
Generations and Collective Memory is an ambitious attempt to connect two concepts that are intrinsically difficult to define and even harder to research in a systematic and comparative way. The first part deals with collective memory by focusing on three mnemonic signifiers (Christopher Columbus, the relationship between Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln) and their changes over time. The second part explores the importance of a generational effect on memory by drawing on a set of comparative cases. The third part goes beyond the “critical year effect” to address wider concerns in the study of collective memory.
The first part of the book offers an intriguing analysis of how memories of three important American signifiers changed over time. The sections on Columbus and Hemmings/Jefferson draw ably on a fascinating combination of sources from across time. The authors explore memories within different social groups by bringing together novels, films, textbooks, news media, scientific debates, and survey data. Through this wide variety of material the polyphony of memory at different points in time becomes clear. For example, despite revisionist thinking about Columbus in academia during the 1980s, traditional images about the “courageous discoverer of America” (p. 40) remained prevalent among the public. Given the inertia of memory and the time involved in translating academic turns into changes in the school curriculum, it was only in the 2000s that Columbus became a widely divisive figure. Drawing on surveys conducted in 1998 and 2014, the authors show that glorifying images have diminished and that critical memories have grown. Notably the Columbus and the Hemings/Jefferson chapters illustrate how memory evolves over time with new actors being audible or new historical evidence being unearthed.
The second part constitutes the conceptual core of the book. Based on various surveys conducted between 1985 and 2010, the authors show that respondents were most likely to mention an event as having been decisive if it occurred when they were between 10 and 30—the generational effect. The first big event experienced by an individual is expected to have an exceptionally strong impact on memory. They rightly underline the difference between witnesses and descendants as being decisive in the way an event is framed. However, it is surprising that the authors do not discuss the role of media or politicians in shaping what is publically perceived as having been a significant event. What an individual recalls as decisive in a survey depends strongly on whether the wider public still considers a particular event to have been decisive. The importance attributed to an event changes over time, and it would have been intriguing to combine the survey data with a wider investigation into the meaning of the events mentioned by respondents.
The third part further develops the concept of collective memory. In particular the chapter about generational experiences of war is noteworthy for its crossing of different mnemonic narratives and inverting of perspectives. The authors explore how memories of World War II and the Vietnam War influenced memories of the Gulf War (1990–1991) and the Iraq War (2003–2011). Every new experience is in need of interpretive anchorage and it is through historical analogies that particular interpretations of current events become coherent. On one side, George H.W. Bush compared Saddam Hussein to Adolf Hitler and Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait with Nazi conquests of neighboring countries prior to World War II. On the other side, Democrats like Senator Bob Kerry drew on the Vietnam experience to warn about U.S. military interventions (p. 150). The authors illustrate a decisive shift towards the Hitler analogy during the Gulf War, highlighting how the unfolding of events also alters collective memories.
How does Generations and Collective Memory fit with the most recent theoretical advances in the field of memory studies? The book’s conceptual discussion is eclectic; clearly, the term “memory” has multiple meanings. The authors want to explore “how ordinary people participate in collective memory” (p. 13). Within the framework offered, however, this is a problematic assertion. There is no development of how this participation might shape collective memory, or inversely, how different mnemonic narratives influence individuals or how this participation leads to changes in collective memories. It is striking that the literature of the third wave in memory studies is completely absent in the book, despite the usefulness of concepts like “multidirectional memory,” “travelling memory,” or “entangled memory” for providing a more stringent conceptualization.
Thinking about collective memory alongside more recent theoretical innovations changes how one would use survey data. Memory, as operationalized in the book’s second part, is primarily located on the level of the individual. Corning and Schuman suggest that they can measure memory by aggregating responses to survey questions, proposing that memory is meaningfully recalled and can thus be studied on the level of the individual. Moving beyond the early debates between Halbwachs and Bergson, however, memory studies increasingly emphasize that collective memory is not the sum of individual memories but is instead shaped by the communicative situation and an individual’s social embeddedness. With this theoretical perspective, isolated individuals alone are not the level at which collective memories are located.
Despite a crossnational comparative dimension, the research stays enclosed in its methodological nationalism. Collective memories about Columbus, Hemings, or Lincoln neglect any transnational or global memory regime which might have influenced those national narratives. The authors stress, for instance, that Columbus memories have tarnished since the 1980s—but this disintegration of heroic national narratives is neither unique to Columbus nor to the United States. It is precisely this observation which drove Pierre Nora to his study of French lieux de mémoire. It would have been enriching to consider how non-national dynamics affected collective memories on the national level. As the multidirectionality, traveling, or entangled approaches underline, memories have never been exclusively enclosed in national containers.
An important question concerns a possible distinction between memory and knowledge. The authors aim to capture memory by asking respondents what events “seem to you to have been especially important” (p. 83), and assess knowledge by asking “Have you heard of … ?” and then following up with “What does … refer to?” The line drawn here seems debatable. Is the distinction between memory and knowledge analytically productive? The distinction implicitly suggests an underlying dichotomy between a true interpretation of an event—knowledge—and later distortions through memory. However, every perspective on an event is an interpretation and therefore even the earliest interpretations of any event rely on existing interpretive strands, for instance memories of similar events. Therefore knowledge is itself a product of memory and the distinction between the two is blurred, as the authors explore when they study those responses that were initially coded as “false” and later indicate interesting mnemonic patterns (p. 185).
Despite these lingering questions, this book is also of interest to a general audience. It is well written, careful in its interpretations of the data used, and draws on a very rich set of sources. It opens new avenues for further research that have the potential to bring the more interpretive part of the social sciences into dialogue with the most recent work undertaken in the humanities.
