1.4.10 Chances and Risks of Politics and Practices of Historical Memory, Heritage and Identity
Victor Shnirelman
Project Leader
Project period
2020-2021
Context of Research Project within a Subject of Human Capital
Traumatic memory has a significant impact on a sense of oneself and one’s behavior in certain conditions. Thus, it can either to restrain human potential, or affect it in either negative or positive ways. The same concerns the socio-group level, be it a generation, gender, denomination, socio-professional or ethnic group.
The research project Chances and Risks of Politics and Practices of Historical Memory, Heritage and Identity focuses on studying the diversity of traumatic memory and the problem of cultural heritage with respect to a nature of human resources and their usage for social benefits.
Project Aim
Investigating a variety of traumatic memory is based on materials on deported peoples, Soviet and post-Soviet wars, school textbooks
Project Objectives:
- Making a compilation of tools for a comprehensive anthropological study of the problem of cultural diversity, social sustainability and human resources in the context of global challenges; various forms of historical and cultural (including visual) heritage, ways of its representation and usage for the construction of identities and actualization of cultural memory, including religious and everyday practices, cultural and educational projects, virtual spaces and new media
- Conducting comprehensive anthropological research on the topic of the scientific project Chances and Risks of Politics and Practices of Historical Memory, Heritage and Identity
- Studying the content of traumatic memory, its features in various groups (social, gender, generational, ethnic, religious), a nature of its language, its variable visual expression, political and social activity associated with it
Key Findings
2020
The variety of traumatic memory has been shown and the difficulties of overcoming it in various social and national contexts have been analyzed. The phenomenon of "alternative history" has been analyzed with respect to the Alan controversy in the North Caucasus. It has been shown how, in the context of the "culture wars", the study of ethnogenesis turns into a political science
2021
The role of the state in shaping of images of the past has been studied. It has been shown that in a federal state, these images are created at various levels, and, in addition to the federal government, local authorities, the church, political movements, etc. participate in it. With school textbooks in hands, it has been shown how the collapse of the USSR led to a radical turn in historiography, which in the new states took on an ethnonationalist appearance, because social consolidation took place on the basis of not only citizenship, but also ethnicity. In some cases, contrasting images of the same narrative shaped ideological ground for confrontation between neighbors. A nature of folk traditions in contemporary world has been studied and demonstrated, which are not only maintained and transmitted, but also modified and reinvented in accordance with the needs of the modern society
Publications
Shnirelman V. Traumatic Memory: Approaches to Study and Interpretation (RU) // Siberian historical research. 2021, No. 2. pp. 6 - 29
Conferences
Conference Forget and Recall: Forms and Boundaries of the Soviet Memory (Moscow, Russia, February 4-6, 2021)
XIV Congress of Anthropologists and Ethnologists of Russia (RU). (Tomsk, Russia, July 6–9, 2021)
International Workshop Conflict Escalations and Windows for Peace in Chechnya (1986-2021). Historical Institute, University of Bern. (Bern, Switzerland, December 7–10, 2021)
International conference Identity, National Policies and National Histories in the Modern Age. Center for Research of Jewish Communities on the Caucasus and Central Asia (CJCC) (Ariel University, Israel, December 23, 2021)