Voici les éléments 1 - 10 sur 14
  • Publication
    Métadonnées seulement
    Making sense of refugees on social media: Perspective-taking, political imagination, and Internet memes
    (2018-9-29)
    Glaveanu, Vlad
    ;
    ;
    Literat, Ioana
    There are many dimensions to the ongoing European refugee crisis, including economic, political, and humanitarian. Underlying them, however, is the issue of self–other relations and, in particular, the ways in which Western societies construct images of otherness, defined in cultural, religious and political terms. Since many participants in these debates have never actually interacted with refugees, their reactions to the crisis are often infused by emotion and fueled by a form of imagination that carries political consequences. At the core of this political imagination, we propose, are certain understandings of refugees, of how they think, feel, and intend to act. In other words, more or less explicit processes of perspective taking are at play in audiences’ responses to refugees. In this article, we aim to unpack the social and psychological mechanisms involved in taking the perspective of refugees on digital platforms using the Commitment Model of Perspective Taking (CMPT). Specifically, since online media is a key channel for sharing views about refugees, our focus here is on refugee-related Internet memes shared on Reddit, and the conversations around these visual artifacts. Our findings indicate that participants in these forums most often construct the perspective of refugees from an outside position, based on a commitment to difference, and rarely try to identify with the situation of refugees. We then discuss the ways in which these forms of perspective taking stimulate or hinder reflexivity and contribute to a political imagination that is open to otherness and tolerant of diversity or, on the contrary, fearful and prejudiced towards refugees.
  • Publication
    Accès libre
    Memory acts: A theory for the study of collective memory in everyday life
    History abounds in everyday life: it is in the discourse of the politician who makes a patriotic use of World War II, in the epic movie of medieval inspiration, in the latest museum opening in town, or in the magnet on your fridge that makes a humoristic use of advertisement posters from the fifties. What tools can help us understand how history is used in these contexts and with what purposes? And, more importantly perhaps, how to understand the effects these uses have on us? To answer these questions, this paper proposes to develop a framework to study the uses of collective memory in everyday life. After a short review of the history of collective memory, the concept of memory act is outlined, based on three theoretical traditions: James’ pragmatism, Austin’s speech acts and Mead’s social acts. They are used to argue that everyday usages of collective memory are better understood as inter-subjective and discursive acts that are part of larger activities. Finally, some of the consequences of this theory are discussed.
  • Publication
    Accès libre
    Collective Memory and Social Sciences in the Post-Truth Era
    (2017-6-1) ;
    Bresco de Luna, I.
    ;
    Awad, Sarah
    ;
    Wagoner, B
    The past has never been as relevant for the present as it is in today’s Post-truth world. Not just because many of our political leaders are promising to bring us back to a past that never existed – the Great America of Trump, the Lost Empire of Farage or the French Resistance of Le Pen – but because it seems more and more likely that they are bringing us back to the past as it actually happened – a past where populism successfully brought nationalist leaders to power. In this context, it seems particularly crucial to understand how we relate to our history, how we learn from it and the consequences it may have for the world we live in. These are the questions this special issue explores by adopting a cultural psychological perspective on collective memory – the lay representations of history – and proposing both theoretical and empirical contributions. In this editorial, we will try to first make the case for the political and social importance of collective memory. Second, we will argue why theoretical discussions – not just empirical research – are necessary to tackle these issues. Third, we will discuss the role we believe cultural psychology should play in the current context and the dangers of turning it into a field disconnected from social and political realities. Finally, we will present the contents of this issue and how we hope it tackles some of the problems raised in this editorial.
  • Publication
    Accès libre
    Personal trajectories, collective memories: remembering and the life-course
    How do we understand the broad history to which we belong? What meaning do we give to it and what role does it have in our lives? This paper proposes to approach collective memory from the perspective of the subject, adopting a developmental perspective to explore how people build specific relations and representations of the historical past. Building on the literature on collective remembering and on life-course studies, it conceptualises memory an as oriented, culturally mediated and dialogical action with a developmental history, embodied in ‘trajectories of remembering’. This conception is applied to the life trajectory of Alain, a 44-year-old Belgian journalist, with a particular interest in the social and intersubjective dimensions of collective remembering. From this analysis, it will be concluded that people’s relation to history is the product of the different positions they assume through time. The study of these successive experiences and their integration can thus shed new lights on how we relate to history and give it meaning.
  • Publication
    Accès libre
    Creative imagination
    (2017)
    Glăveanu, Vlad Petre
    ;
    Karwowski, Maciej
    ;
    Jankowska, Dorota M.
    ;
    In this chapter I look at the links between collective memory and the imagination of collective futures. Drawing on works on imagination and autobiographical memory, I first discuss the role of past experiences in imagining the future. I then explore the consequences of such a perspective for collective memories and collective futures, which will lead me to argue that the former provides the basis for the latter. Three case studies are presented, each illustrating a different type of relation between collective memory and collective imagination: 1) collective memory as a frame of reference to imagine the future; 2) collective memory as a source of experiences and examples to imagine what is likely, possible or desirable; and 3) collective memory as generalisable experience from which representations of the world – Personal World Philosophies – are constructed and in turn used to imagine the collective future. This will lead me to the conclusion that representations of the world are characterised by “temporal heteroglossia”, the simultaneous presence of multiple periods of time, and that they mediate the relation between collective memory and collective imagination, allowing us to “think through time”.
  • Publication
    Accès libre
    Staying on topic: doing research between improvisation and systematisation
    Doing scientific research is, in theory, a systematic and well-organised enterprise. Field works are planned, interview guides are prepared, participants are selected. And, if the job was done well, data is collected, analysed, interpreted in a proper, clean, scientific manner. In reality, however, things often go astray: field works get cancelled, interviews get side-tracked and participants drop out. The investigation of human lives, as it turns out, cannot do away with the messiness of human lives. In such cases, researchers must adapt to the new situation and yet to stay on topic: in one word, they need to improvise. How, then, does research remain scientific? In this chapter, I will argue that it is not planning, organisation or control that make good academic work, and that it is often in the unexpected that the most interesting results emerge. What matters, however, is what is done afterwards; how hunches and surprises are turned into systematic investigations, analyses and interpretations. This argument will be illustrated with the story of an ‘impromptu’ fieldwork in Brussels and its unpredictable consequences; or, rather, how staying on topic requires one to systematically stray away from it.
  • Publication
    Accès libre
    Thinking through time: From collective memories to collective futures
    In this chapter I look at the links between collective memory and the imagination of collective futures. Drawing on works on imagination and autobiographical memory, I first discuss the role of past experiences in imagining the future. I then explore the consequences of such a perspective for collective memories and collective futures, which will lead me to argue that the former provides the basis for the latter. Three case studies are presented, each illustrating a different type of relation between collective memory and collective imagination: 1) collective memory as a frame of reference to imagine the future; 2) collective memory as a source of experiences and examples to imagine what is likely, possible or desirable; and 3) collective memory as generalisable experience from which representations of the world – Personal World Philosophies – are constructed and in turn used to imagine the collective future. This will lead me to the conclusion that representations of the world are characterised by “temporal heteroglossia”, the simultaneous presence of multiple periods of time, and that they mediate the relation between collective memory and collective imagination, allowing us to “think through time”.
  • Publication
    Accès libre
    Personal trajectories, collective memories: Remembering and the life-course
    How do we understand the broad history to which we belong? What meaning do we give to it and what role does it have in our lives? This paper proposes to approach collective memory from the perspective of the subject, adopting a developmental perspective to explore how people build specific relations and representations of the historical past. Building on the literature on collective remembering and on life-course studies, it conceptualises memory an as oriented, culturally mediated and dialogical action with a developmental history, embodied in ‘trajectories of remembering’. This conception is applied to the life trajectory of Alain, a 44-year-old Belgian journalist, with a particular interest in the social and intersubjective dimensions of collective remembering. From this analysis, it will be concluded that people's relation to history is the product of the different positions they assume through time. The study of these successive experiences and their integration can thus shed new lights on how we relate to history and give it meaning.
  • Publication
    Accès libre
    Reflexivity
    (2016) ;
    Glăveanu, Vlad Petre