The Dictionary of Human Geography

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collective memories are made material in

the landscape, and the practices of memory-

making through performances and rituals of

remembrance. There is also a substantial

literature onheritageentrepreneurship as a

marketable good (see alsopostmodernism).

Maurice Halbwachs’ book On collective

memory(1992 [1941]) was an important early

text theorizing memory as simultaneously

social and spatial (as opposed to highly indi-

vidualized and purely psychological) (Hebbert,

2005). Activities enhancing remembrance of

a collective past, including commemorative

rituals, story-telling, place naming and the

accumulation and display of relics, trigger a

social memorythat solidifies a common shared

identity. Halbwachs emphasized the import-

ance of anchoring these memories in spatial

imagery and physical artefacts, arguing that

social memory endures best when there is a

‘double focus – a physical object, a material

reality such as a statue. .. and also a symbol,

or something of spiritual significance, some-

thing shared by the group that adheres to and

is superimposed upon this physical reality’

(1992 [1941], p. 204).

This focus on the social constitution and

context of memory informed French historian

Pierre Nora’s (1997) influential project, which

traced the development of French national

identitythrough the analysis of a variety of

‘lieux de me ́moires’, or sites of memory (see also

nationalism). Nora (1989, p. 9) argued that

with the demise ofpeasant societies, ‘true

memory’, available ‘in gestures and habits, in

skills passed down by unspoken traditions, in

the body’s inherent self-knowledge, in unstud-

ied reflexes and ingrained memories’, has been

replaced by ‘modern memory’ that is self-

conscious, historical and archival. In modern

society, we ‘must deliberately create archives,

maintain anniversaries, organize celebrations

because such activities no longer naturally

occur’ (1989, p. 12). In short, the primordial

memory of peasant societies embedded in

milieux de me ́moires(environments of memory)

has been substituted by much more self-

consciously created lieux de me ́moires. The

production of theselieux, or sites, has been a

result of the transformations wrought by

modernity, including globalization, the

rise of massmediaand the institutionalization

of a professional discipline of history. While

Nora’s distinction between true and modern

memory may be overwrought, in the 1980s his

work spawned widespread interest in memory

and place throughout thehumanities and

social sciences, and it continues to provide

the impetus for a vast array of studies of dif-

ferent types of memory spaces (Legg, 2005).

The dominance of the nation-state in

framing memory has been the focus of much

research on monuments and memorials.

Because memory is always shadowed by for-

getting, is vulnerable to manipulation and has

a capacity to facilitate (or coerce) social cohe-

sion, what is remembered and forgotten in

national memory both reflectspowerrelations

and is of political consequence. Elite and

dominant memory is typically mobilized by

the powerful in the cultivation of a national

imaginary, through monuments, memorials,

public ritual, architectural and urban design,

and through the erasure of previous place

names or settlements of the dispossessed.

However, human geographers have regularly

noted the contested nature of meaning sur-

rounding even official symbolic sites, and the

production and consumption of such sites

often involve conflict (Till, 2001, 2005;

Foote, 2003). They are neither uniformly

designednor read(andspaceis significant in

the construction of that meaning; Johnson,

2005). Nor do elites inevitably have a hold

onlandscapeproduction. Burk (forthcom-

ing) describes the creation by grassroots

groups in Vancouver of monuments to me-

morializeviolenceagainst women. Recogniz-

ing the ‘power of place’ to repair cultural

amnesia and nurture a more inclusive public

memory, Hayden (1997) details a series of

commemorative projects that concretize long

histories of settlement of African American,

Latina and Asian American families in down-

town Los Angeles. Alderman (2003, p. 171)

has examined how African Americans strug-

gled to control and determine the scale of

streets in which Martin Luther King Jr.

would be remembered and thus thescaleat

which his memory would find public expres-

sion. He notes that the scale of memory was

‘open to redefinition not only by opponents to

his political/social philosophy but also people

who unquestionably embraced and benefited

from this philosophy’.

Memory cannot be dictated, and popular

memory can be an important vehicle through

which dominant, official renditions of the past

and present are resisted by mobilizing groups

to create subaltern and counter-memories,

and alternative futures (Legg, 2005). Shared

memories of loss and longing for land may

form the basis for collective claims to rights

or reparation: Kosek (2004) argues that

shared memories of dispossession from land

by Mexicans living in northern New Mexico

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MEMORY