Time Maps: Collective Memory and the Social Shape of the Past

Time Maps: Collective Memory and the Social Shape of the Past
ISBN-10
0226981533
ISBN-13
9780226981536
Category
History
Pages
192
Language
English
Published
2004-11
Publisher
University of Chicago Press
Author
Eviatar Zerubavel

Description

"As Eviatar Zerubavel demonstrates in Time Maps, we cannot answer questions such as these without a deeper understanding of how we envision the past. In a pioneering attempt to map the structure of our collective memory, Zerubavel considers the cognitive patterns we use to organize the past in our minds and the mental strategies that help us string together unrelated events into coherent and meaningful narratives, as well as the social grammar of battles over conflicting interpretations of history. Drawing on fascinating examples that range from Hiroshima to the Holocaust, from Columbus to Lucy, and from ancient Egypt to the former Yugoslavia, Zerubavel shows how we construct historical origins; how we tie discontinuous events together into stories; how we link families and entire nations through genealogies; and how we separate distinct historical periods from one another through watersheds, such as the invention of fire or the fall of the Berlin Wall.".

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