ABSTRACT
This chapter will proceeds under four headings. The first "Context" will survey the multi- and interdisciplinary approaches to context in the study of memory; the second "Containers" and third "Identity" will elucidate the consequences of some of the principal contexts in use; and the final section will explore possible alternatives. In this sense, the dynamic picture of multiplicity and exchange that Bodnar portrays in relation to remembering is restricted to what takes place inside the main public context, while the context itself is viewed as self-explanatory, solid, and unchanging. As part of a larger contextual shift, social scientists now generally interpret processes of knowledge acquisition as stemming from relations of the self to social and cultural contexts. An alternative contextualization cannot be reduced to the placing of memory on a "transnational" level, which often presents interactions between national containers without challenging their roundedness. Indeed, the plots of collective identity sometimes develop outside the intended homeland.
