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On the basis of examining life stories narrated by 63 Israeli male veterans of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, this article delves into the social construction of personal memory. Focusing on the remembering subject will allow us to study this process by highlighting the agent who creates his or her world, but at the same time it will disclose how society frames and channels the agent's choices. My contention is that personal memory (traumatic or normalizing, conforming or critical) is embedded within, designed by, and derives its meaning from, a memory field that offers different interpretations of war. Yet this memory field is not an open space, and the remembering subject is not free to choose any interpretation he wishes. Cultural criteria "distribute" accessibility to different collective memories according to social entitlement. These "distributive criteria" dictate who is entitled to remember and what is to be remembered, thereby controlling the extent of trauma and criticism of personal memory.

This study conceptualizes the relationship between recollection of the past and relocation in the context of immigration. Combining symbolic interactionist and narrative paradigms, it explores how immigrants'representations of past experiences inform their identity construction and the process of entering the host society. Our interpretive analysis of personal narratives related spontaneously by eighty‐nine Russian‐Jewish immigrants in Israel and Germany reveals that they choose to “normalize” their anti‐Semitic experiences by representing them as secondary, expected, and “normal.” They do so via four narrating tactics of normalization: obscuring, self‐exclusion, vindication, and essentializing stigma. Each tactic devalues the cultural depiction (grand narrative) of anti‐Semitic experiences as transformative and traumatic. By normalizing their past, the immigrants deconstruct and resist the authority and moral commands of the national narrative they encounter in both societies. Putting forward normalization as an alternative interpretation, the immigrants claim ownership of their biography and cultural identity.

This article suggests a new perspective for examining the particular social and organizational characteristics of military reserves forces and the special experiences of serving in the reserves. To illustrate the unique social position of reservists, the authors develop a theoretical model that likens them to transmigrants. Accordingly, the authors suggest that society may benefit from looking at reserves both as sorts of social and organizational hybrids or amalgams-they are soldiers and civilians, they are outside yet inside the military system, and are invested in both spheres-and as continual migrants journeying between military and civilian spheres. The authors end by suggesting that it may be fruitful to study three segments of the military, each of which has its own dynamics: regulars, conscripts, and reserves. This differentiation allows society to examine different patterns of motivation, cohesion, political commitment and awareness, and long-term considerations that characterize each segment.

A B S T R AC TThis article develops the concept of the 'canonical generation' -a generational unit that identifies itself and is identified with the national canon. By highlighting this concept we explore the inter-relations between national and biographical memories. We illustrate how generations are distinguishable in terms of the freedom they have to express their critical and personal voices. Our analysis is based on a comparison of two sets of Jewish-Israeli war stories, those of the 1948 generation (veterans of 'the War of Independence') and those of the 1973 generation (veterans of 'the Yom Kippur War'). K E Y WOR D Sgenerations / nationalism / personal narratives / social memory A generation is a social category that mediates between personal and social memory (Halbwachs, 1992;Mannheim, 1952;Olick and Robbins, 1998). In this article we introduce the concept of the 'canonical generation' and consider how various generations are differentially identified with the nation's story. The canonical generation is the one whose personal stories converge with a formative national event and become a model for worthy behaviour. Our main aim is to understand how the 'location' of a generation within the national biography enables or limits its agency; what would appear to be private experiences are in fact shaped by the different patterns of remembrance available to each generation. Sociology