Potent places as embodied memory in Cambodia
Les lieux puissants comme supports de mémoire au Cambodge
Résumé
Commenting on sociologist Maurice Halbwach's (1925) influential theoretical essay on memory over its publication, Paul Connerton declared that continuing to speak of "collective memory" required recognition that the term subsumed "quite simply facts of communication between individuals." (Connerton 2010: 38). Following Halbwachs' fundamental lessons, I take collective memory here to mean a narrative of past events that is produced by a social group, and always reimagined and retold with regard to the present situation. In this essay, I draw on over nine years of fieldwork in the western Cambodian province of Pursat to describe situations where the individual acts of communication that produce and transmit collective memory are mediated by places. I suggest that the collective memory of Khmer people in Cambodia is inextricably linked to perceptions and practices related to the land. This connection reflects the key importance of the land in many aspects of social life. It follows that collective memories are not always national, but regional.
Domaines
Anthropologie sociale et ethnologie
Origine : Fichiers produits par l'(les) auteur(s)
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