Dead work: The construction and reconstruction of the Harlan Miners Memorial

Scott, Shaunna L.

doi:10.1007/bf02393277

Cited by 32 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…1 Schwartz and Schuman (2005), however, caution that scholars' exclusive concern with the activities of memory elites (e.g., curators, scholars, and movement activists) or, we would add, with the politics of commemoration or semiotic readings of memory sites, leaves unknown and thus unanalyzed what ordinary people do with their collective pasts. Memory projects can fail for a number of reasons: memory entrepreneurs may lack what Armstrong and Crage (2006) call the "mnemonic capacity" to translate private aspiration into public commemoration, for example, or their mnemonic objectives may be thwarted by a restrictive, constraining past, including past memory struggles (Jansen 2007;Schudson 1989a;Scott 1996). At its root, the problem is that elites' or cultural gatekeepers' "facts of representation" of the past need not coincide with rank-and-file memory users' "facts of reception" of the past (Kansteiner 2002:195; see also Irwin-Zarecka 1994).…”

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confidence: 99%

What Do These Memories Do? Civil Rights Remembrance and Racial Attitudes

Griffin¹,

Bollen²

2009

Am Sociol Rev

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Scholarly inquiry into collective memory has fostered a host of innovative questions, perspectives, and interpretations about how individuals and communities are both constituted by the past and mobilize it for present-day projects. Race is one of the more important current issues demonstrating how the presence of the past is both potent and sorrowful in the United States. It is therefore critical to examine how memories of racial oppression, conflict, and reconstruction shape race relations. Studies of race relations, however, generally ignore collective memory's role in shaping racial norms and attitudes. This article uses the 1993 General Social Survey to address the silences in the collective memory and race relations literatures by examining how Americans' recollections of the civil rights movement influence their racial attitudes and racial policy preferences. Although we find that Americans' opinions about government programs targeting African Americans are unrelated to civil rights memory, respondents who spontaneously recalled the civil rights struggle and its victories as an especially important historical event generally expressed more racially liberal opinions than did those with different memories. Our findings both support the basic presupposition of collective memory studies—memory matters—and point to a fruitful innovation in the study of racial attitudes.

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confidence: 99%

What Do These Memories Do? Civil Rights Remembrance and Racial Attitudes

Griffin¹,

Bollen²

2009

Am Sociol Rev

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“…Such efforts have been called ''counter-memory activism,'' which is defined as memory acts used by a group to contest and redress what they consider to be hegemonic renderings of the past. Counter-memory researchers have explored contests surrounding remembrance of the Holocaust (e.g., Douglass and Vogler 2003;LaCapra 1998;Linenthal 2001), violence against women (e.g., Bold, Knowles, and Leach 2002;Kelley 1995;Rosenberg 1998), slavery and racism (e.g., Daynes 1997;Griffin 2004), colonialism (Clarke 2003), and workplace tragedies (e.g., Scott 1996), among others.…”

Section: Narrating Remembrance Through Counter-memory Activismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Counter-Memory Activism in the Aftermath of Tragedy: A Case Study of the Westray Families Group

Verberg

Davis

2011

Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue Canadienne De Sociologie

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Narratives are critical to how people understand themselves and the significant events of their lives. Drawing upon social memory theory and the social constructionist approach to social problems, this study provides a narrative analysis of the counter-memory activism of the Westray Families Group (WFG), which formed after 26 men died in the 1992 Westray mine explosion (Plymouth, NS). Against alternative explanations promoted by more powerful stakeholders, the WFG adopted and weaved a corporate negligence narrative into their commemorative activism. This study illustrates how a small families group can draw reflexively upon and reshape cultural scripts to narrate how others should remember and respond to key events.

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“…But while the old monument hinted at the context of their deaths (working conditions, class relations, etc. ), the new one is silent on the broader meaning, thus enabling the entire community (including victims' families as well as those responsible for the deaths) to share the same commemorative space (Scott 1996). In the case of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the framing of the narrative is one in which the first component (American soldiers) is certainly adopted, the second component is partially adopted by mentioning Vietnam ambiguously (Wagner-Pacifici and Schwartz 1991); the third component, American foreign policy, is virtually excluded.…”

Section: Framing Narratives Of Difficult Pastsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As in the case of the miners' commemoration in Kentucky (Scott 1996), the agents of memory in Rabin's case were forced to compromise, especially where the state was involved (e.g., the design of Rabin's gravestone). However, the power of the Israeli state was limited, not only because each move was closely scrutinized by members of Knesset from the Left, by other agents of memory, and by some of the media, but also because the Rabin family was rapidly turning into "a cultural authority" (Zelizer 1992).…”

Section: The Agents Of Memorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Commemorating a Difficult Past: Yitzhak Rabin's Memorials

Vinitzky‐Seroussi

2002

Am Sociol Rev

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While the literature on collective memory suggests that a multivocal type of commemoration will be constructed in response to a difficult past, Yitzhak Rabin's commemorations provide a case study of a different type of commemoration of challenging events: a fragmented commemoration. A fragmented commemoration consists of multiple times and spaces in which different discourses of the past are aimed at disparate audiences. The author offers a theoretical model within which the emergence of both types of commemoration (multivocal and fragmented) can be understood and analyzed. The model consists of three dimensions: (1) the political culture of the commemorating society, (2) the relevance of past to present, and (3) the power of agents of memory. Explanatory models consisting of a dynamic interplay of agents, cultures, and structures prove valuable as a basis for the study of various sorts of cultural productions in general and commemorative types in particular.

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Dead work: The construction and reconstruction of the Harlan Miners Memorial

Abstract: Memorial

Cited by 32 publications

References 18 publications

What Do These Memories Do? Civil Rights Remembrance and Racial Attitudes

What Do These Memories Do? Civil Rights Remembrance and Racial Attitudes

Counter-Memory Activism in the Aftermath of Tragedy: A Case Study of the Westray Families Group

Commemorating a Difficult Past: Yitzhak Rabin's Memorials

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