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Collective Memory, A Fusion of cognitive Mechanisms and cultural Processes

La mémoire collective, une fusion de mécanismes cognitifs et de processus culturels

Kollektive gedächtnis, eine fusion von kognitiven mechanismen und kulturellen prozessen

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Revue de Synthèse

An Erratum to this article was published on 08 September 2014

Abstract

The paper assumes a theoretical-empirical interface exists between top-down (structural concepts) and bottom-up (cognitive mechanisms and socio-cultural interactions) approaches to collective memory. Both deal with collaborative group accounts, material culture such as artefacts and representational re-descriptive technologies. Anthropology has shown how communal life was based on story telling, rituals, artefacts, routine practices constitutive of daily life representational re-descriptions and the reproduction of implicit and explicit emotional normative belief systems embedded in kinship and social network relations.

Résumé

L’article propose d’établir une interface théorique et empirique entre les approches de la mémoire collective de haut en bas (structurale) et de bas en haut (cognitive et interactionniste). L’une et l’autre, en effet, prennent acte des solidarités collectives et des cultures matérielles. Narrations historiques, rituels, objets, pratiques routinières constitutives des re-descriptions représentationnelles banales fondent ainsi la vie collective. Perdurent, inscrits dans la parenté et les réseaux de relations sociales, des systèmes implicites et explicites de croyances normatives et affectives. L’analyse est étendue jusqu’aux élaborations démographiques contemporaines.

Zusammenfassung

Der Artikel schlägt vor, eine theoretische und empirische Schnittstelle zwischen zwei Ansätze zur kollektiven Gedächtnis zu etablieren: eine, von oben nach unten (strukturell) und zweitens, von unten nach oben (kognitive Mechanismen und sozio-kulturellen Wechselwirkungen). Beide befassen sich mit kooperativen Gruppen, materielle Kultur, wie Artefakten und repräsentationalen Neubeschreibungen. Implizite und explizite Systeme der normativen und affektiven Überzeugungen fortbestehen, in Verwandtschaftsnetze und soziale Beziehungen eingeschrieben. Diese Analyse ist der zeitgenössischen demografischen Ausführungen erweitert.

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Correspondence to Aaron V. Cicourel.

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Aaron V. Cicourel, born in 1928, is Emeritus at the University of California, San Diego and at the University of California, San Francisco. He recently published “Origin and Demise of Socio-cultural Presentations of Self from Birth to Death etc.”, Sociology, February 2013, 47, 1, p. 51-73

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Cicourel, A.V. Collective Memory, A Fusion of cognitive Mechanisms and cultural Processes. Rev synth 136, 309–328 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11873-014-0258-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11873-014-0258-7

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