The Labyrinth of Memory: Ethnographic Journeys

by Jacob Climo, Marea Teski

Overview

This work is a study of the various ways in which individuals and groups use memory narratives to express and form the quality of their lives. Activities of remembering, forgetting, reconstructing, metamorphosizing, and vicariously remembering are described for cultures in Latin America, Africa, Europe, Canada, and the United States. The authors find that the territory of memory is bounded by neither space nor time, but exists in the minds of individuals and groups. Memory changes as individuals and cultures change, forming a dialogue between the past and the present in response to present and changing needs. Memories of dislocation, war, torture, famine, and separation are given particular attention for the way they create meaning in the present and future lives of those who remember and share their memories.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780897894098
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	07/30/1995
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.56(d)
Lexile:	1370L (what's this?)

About the Author

MAREA C. TESKI is Professor of Anthropology at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey.

JACOB J. CLIMO is Professor of Anthropology at Michigan State University.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction by Marea C. Teski and Jacob J. Climo
Remembering
Leaving Home: Memories of Distant - Living Children by Jacob J. Climo
Children of Immigrants Remember: The Evolution of Ethnic Culture by Rakhmiel Peltz
The Remembering Consciousness of a Polish Exile Government by Marea C. Teski
Forgetting
Social Memory and Germany's Anti-Foreigner Crisis: A Case of Collective Forgetting by Andrea L. Smith
Reconstructing
Mau Mau and Memory Rooms: Placing a Social Emotion by Richard Swiderski
Chaptering the Narrative: The Material of Memory in Kilimanjaro, Tanzania by Donna O. Kerner
It Only Counts If You Can Share It by Molly G. Schuchat
Metamorphosis
Memories of Violence, Monuments of History by Antonella Fabri
Representation and Valuation in Micmac Prehistory: The Petroglyphs of Bedford, Nova Scotia by Brian Leigh Molyneaux
Vicarious Memory
Prisoners of Silence: A Vicarious Holocaust Memory by Jacob J. Climo
Memories and Their Unintended Consequences by Iwao Ishino
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

Anthropologists apply the principles of ethnography to the past, journeying with their informants through time as they conceptualize it and reflect on their views of their individual and collective past. Among the journeys are remembering leaving home, forgetting Germany's anti-foreigner crisis, reconstructing a social emotion, the metamorphosis of memories of violence, and a vicarious memory of the Holocaust. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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