In Social Memory and History, a group of anthropologists, sociologists, social linguists, gerontologists, and historians explore the ways in which memory reconstructs the past and constructs the present. A substantial introduction by the editors outlines the key issues in the understanding of social memory: its nature and process, its personal and political implications, the crisis in memory, and the relationship between social and individual memory. Ten cross-cultural case studies-groups ranging from Kiowa songsters, Burgundian farmers, elderly Phildelaphia whites, Chilean political activists, American immigrants to Israel, and Irish working class women-then explore how social memory transmits culture or contests it at the individual, community, and national levels in both tangible and symbolic spheres.

A history of the Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews living in Mexico City, describing the communal structures they created since the beginning of the century to sustain their cultural survival. The Ashkenazi arrived in Mexico with few resources but created a network of organizations to ensure their survival, contacting points of conflict with the larger