Memorylands is an original and
fascinating investigation of the nature of heritage,
memory and understandings of the past in Europe today.
It looks at how Europe has become a ’memoryland’ –
littered with material reminders of the past, such as
museums, heritage sites and memorials; and at how this
‘memory phenomenon’ is related to the changing nature of
identities – especially European, national and
cosmopolitan. In doing so, it provides new insights into
how memory and the past are being performed and
reconfigured in Europe – and with what effects.
Drawing especially, though not exclusively, on
cases, concepts and arguments from social and cultural
anthropology, Memorylands argues for a deeper
and more nuanced understanding of the cultural
assumptions involved in relating to the past. It
theorizes the various ways in which ‘materializations’
of identity work and relates these to different forms of
identification within Europe. The book also addresses
questions of methodology, including discussion of
historical, ethnographic, interdisciplinary and
innovative methods. Through a wide-range of case-studies
from across Europe, Sharon Macdonald argues that Europe
is home to a much greater range of ways of making the
past present than is usually realized – and a greater
range of forms of ‘historical consciousness’. At the
same time, however, she seeks to highlight what she
calls ‘the European memory complex’ – a repertoire of
prevalent patterns in forms of recollection and ‘past
presencing’. The examples in Memorylands
are drawn from both the margins and metropolitan
centres, from the relatively small-scale and local, the
national and the avant-garde. The book looks at pasts
that are potentially identity-disrupting – or
‘difficult’ – as well as those that affirm identities or
offer possibilities for transcending national identities
or articulating more cosmopolitan futures. Topics
covered include authenticity, temporalities, embodiment,
commodification, nostalgia and Ostalgie, the
musealization of everyday and folk-life, Holocaust
commemoration and tourism, narratives of war, the
heritage of Islam, transnationalism, and the future of
the past. Memorylands is engagingly written
and accessible to general readers as well as offering a
new synthesis for advanced researchers in memory and
heritage studies. It is essential reading for those
interested in identities, memory, material culture,
Europe, tourism and heritage.
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