ABSTRACT
This chapter builds on works on sociocultural psychology, social thinking, and collective memory to propose a new perspective on how we think about the collective past, conceptualising it as an oriented, culturally mediated, and dialogical action. It expands on the existing literature to introduce a model of historical representations centred on the relation between action, self, other, and tools and signs. This results in four research questions, explored either transversally (question 1) or through a specific study (questions 2–4):
In what contexts are representations of the collective past used, and for what purposes?
How are representations of the collective past constructed and mobilised in interactions?
How do people come to develop specific or unique representations of the collective past?
What resources are used to construct representations of the collective past, and how are they employed?
This chapter also argues that we need to move beyond the term collective memory to designate such phenomena, as it is both ambiguous and potentially misleading.