Introduction: Interactionist Approaches to Collective Memory

Much collective memory theory is rooted in the Durkheimian emphasis on collective representations and its concomitant structuralism. In particular, this approach is closely linked to the writings of one of Durkheim's most prominent students, Maurice Halbwachs (1992). The concept of collective memory incorporates collective objects and the collective conscience, and how these two phenomena present and influence cultural values. Such a perspective has both a macrosociological and a microsociological dimension. While it is true that interactionism has addressed macrosociological issues (Fine 1993; Maines 1977), the starting point of the perspective is the relationships among people as they respond to each other, create shared pasts and futures, and collectively negotiate meaning. Thus this special issue, addressing how symbolic interactionists approach collective memory, challenges the validity of the boundaries that we have traditionally set for ourselves. In some ways, this concept is fully consistent with traditional interactionist models and relies on the writings of such prominent theorists as Charles Horton Cooley (1918:112–24) and his analysis of the social construction of fame and George Herbert Mead (1934) and his discussion of social time (Flaherty and Fine 2001; Maines, Sugrue, and Katovich 1983). However, in other ways, the sociological approach to memory appears to suggest a collective thought process that is a distinctive challenge to a focus on face-to-face meaning construction. Can the creation of collective memory be separated from the actions of social actors in their negotiations of meaning? We believe that addressing and integrating a range of approaches to collective memory advances the interactionist project. As is often noted, much of the analysis of collective memory reifies the collective or the group mind (Olick 1999; Olick and Robbins 1998). One method of reconciliation is to include the analysis not only of collective memory but of all the processes “through which we are shaped by the past” (Olick and Robbins 1998:106). Accordingly, this expanded domain of inquiry—“social memory studies”—is more useful because it does not reify “a mystical group mind” (p. 106). Yet much of the analytic value in the concept of collective memory is found in its reification. A reified notion of the group mind allows us to analyze patterns of social thought that adhere at a level of social life that transcends the individual, just as long as such a strategy does not neglect the individuals and groups that are consequential in establishing memory through reputation work. Although a substantive focus that reifies memory flattens out individual or even group-level behavior, it can reveal behavior patterns that affect individuals and groups even in the absence of their intentions. Ultimately, collective memory is produced through symbolic interaction. Even if collective memory is treated as a reified concept, interactionism is a necessary paradigm for examining how that objectification operates. The articles in this special issue isolate mechanisms of that process. With one exception (the article by Chana Teeger and Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi), these articles are based on papers presented at a conference on interactionist approaches to collective memory sponsored and funded by the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction and held at Northwestern University in May 2004. Three sensitizing questions are critical to consider in any interactionist examination of collective memory. While they do not exhaust the issues implicated in how interactionists might address issues of reputation and memory, they do present critical dichotomies. Should we conceptualize collective memory as process or product? This question has long has afflicted sociology and is well described in Norbert Elias's What Is Sociology? The traditional approach suggests that collective memory is a social product. The approach implicated in a fusion of interactionism and collective memory research is conducive to interpreting memory as both process and product. Social interaction is the process through which a product—in this case, collective memory—is produced. Processes produce products, whether those products are material or ideational. A second approach emphasizes the role of collective memory as a largely processual phenomenon. Under this paradigm, there is no such thing as a product or outcome that we can call collective memory, only the act of “collective remembering” (Wertsch 2002). This is a form of mediated action between agents and their cultural tools. In his discussion of the Frankfurt school's Gruppenexperiment, Jeffrey Olick argues that contemporary sociologists should look to this and other older research methods to help bring “process into relief.” This Frankfurt school experiment, which used group conversation to discern “latent nonpublic opinion,” was considered more effective for assessing public opinion than traditional opinion research, as it duplicated the organic and contextualized processes through which opinions are formed. In presenting this approach, Olick elides a product-oriented collective memory analysis with one that contemporary sociologists of memory adopted—one that involved “more genuinely processual observation and experimentation with the kinds of goals and concepts the Frankfurters [adopted].” Beim similarly suggests that we adopt a more process-oriented approach. He encourages research that focuses on the interactions between agents and institutionalized collective memory objects, and how that interaction produces schemata by which people make sense of the past. Beim argues that much of collective memory research conflates the production of a collective memory object with its reception and thus reifies those objects. The sensitizing concept that he proposes, based largely on culture and cognition theory, eases some of that conflation and allows us to consider more concretely how interactionism and collective memory interact. As Olick notes, the hallmark of interactionism is its process-oriented approach. But, as we note above, examining process should not preclude considering product. If we are to keep integrity in the collective memory concept, then our analysis must include both. What makes a collective memory effective: its inherent qualities or its cultural promotion and reception? Collective memory scholars often disagree over what makes a collective memory effective or, more precisely, over what makes a memory a collective memory. Is it the historical event itself (Schwartz 2000), some combination of social pressures and history (Gubrium 1993), the tangible forms in which that memory is manifested, or something distinctly different? Here we consider the forms a collective memory takes, since people interact with those forms to produce their culturally shared ideas about the past. Gary Alan Fine's model of historical equivalence helps address this question. He suggests that four qualities in historical events are necessary to make the claim that they are comparable and thus that they have successfully been instantiated into the public consciousness as part of a category. Fine contends that historical events need to be similar in magnitude, metaphoric continuity, analogous causation, and comparable effects to sustain the claim that they are comparable. These qualities not only provide for a comparison of events that have been collectivized but sustain the ability of those events to be collectivized in the first place. Fine (2001) previously argued that reputations are created and sustained through reputational entrepreneurs. Under this model, a collective memory is produced and sustained by virtue of its promotion. As Teeger and Vinitzky-Seroussi emphasize, effectiveness can become particularly problematic in divided or contested societies. Their analysis of the attempts by the Apartheid Museum, recently built in South Africa, to devise a focused narrative reveals some of the challenges that entrepreneurs of memory face. This museum selects a particular set of historical events, focusing on the central role of the African National Congress. However, such a narrative leaves out much and makes the museum less able to speak to current divisions in South Africa. The implicit point is that one's choice of relevant events makes an argument more persuasive to some populations than to others. Ultimately, the claim is that inherent qualities, promotion, and reception are linked within an interaction system that can either be cohesive or fragmented. Strategies that prove effective for one audience may fail for others. How is a collective memory transmitted and manifested—through media or interpersonal diffusion? We can theorize about process, product, and how a memory is collectivized, but if we do not know how collective memories are manifested tangibly in social spheres, we will not be able to examine such memories accurately. This is particularly germane to an interactionist examination of collective memory, as any such examination involves focusing on how action emerges and is situated in a social context. An interactionist study of collective memory must isolate how individuals relying on concretized forms of collective memory negotiate with each other. The most commonly examined manifestations of memories are beliefs or monuments. But Melinda Milligan demonstrates that memories are also embodied in physical everyday objects. Thus collective memory is ensconced in “the built environment.” Milligan notes that in the world of historic preservationists in New Orleans, structures are preserved because they have aesthetic significance in their own right. Thus preservation is justified by the logic of “buildings, not history.” The public may believe that it is historical importance that counts, but those within the preservationist lobby argue that buildings, in effect, can speak for themselves. Of course, the collective memory that Milligan studies is not just found in the preserved houses. She also examines preservationists' attitudes toward the houses. Her study of attitudes is more aligned with traditional memory research. Olick notes how the Frankfurt school's examination of latent nonpublic opinion that is itself an examination of attitudes was devised in response to the more traditional survey collection of attitudes and beliefs. Collective memory analyses using the latter method have been undertaken most notably by Howard Schuman and his colleagues (Schuman and Corning 2000; Schuman and Scott 1989). Lyn Spillman and Brian Conway examine the physical and the individual as found in bodily memory. Drawing on and also distinguishing themselves from Paul Connerton's (1989) influential writing on bodily memory, Spillman and Conway suggest that while the body is a site of memory—that memory is corporeal—it is not, as Connerton suggests, inscribed in the body. Spillman and Conway encourage a collective memory analysis that includes examining the interdependence of bodily memory and textual memory. Taken together, these issues demonstrate that the interactionist perspective should properly inform the study of collective memory. While we do not wish to excise the macrostructural analysis of memory, as is implicit in some of Durkheim's writings, we assert that memories must be made, constructed, negotiated, and reformulated in action. Collective memory is a living concept, linked to the behaviors and responses of social actors who generate meanings. The recognition that history results from agency, even while it is based on an obdurate reality, demonstrates that the field of social memory studies is ripe for rigorous symbolic interactionist analysis.