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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