Academic literature on the topic 'Commemorative practices'

The analysis shows that military commemorative practices, as a component of the historical memory of the Ukrainian people of World War II, are sufficiently diverse and mainly aimed at uniting society around key issues of state formation. It is established that the essential feature of commemoration is the creation of shared memories through the elaboration of rituals of perpetuation (worship, celebration, etc.) of certain persons and events, the construction of “places of memory” (P. Nora). Commemoration, which is defined as the purposeful process of preserving the memory of events significant to the nation, is realized through commemorative practices – a set of ways that contribute to the consolidation, preservation and transfer in society of its historical past. The most common commemoration practices are the erection of monuments, the creation of museums and memorials, commemorations at national and local levels, commemoration of historical documents, and more.Accordingly, in the context of the formation and reproduction of the historical memory of the Ukrainian people, the militaristic commemorative practices of World War II are divided into three groups, depending on the level of memory and the peculiarities of historical development. In particular, the first group is represented by local forms of militaristic commemoration, initiated by family members, friends and veterans themselves, who collectively represent a group’ collective memory of a war that proclaimed the nation’s reconciliation with its heritage, military losses through the expression of grief, and mourning (accounts for the 40-50s of the twentieth century); the second group is a commemorative practice, the creation of which was initiated by the central authorities (president, parliament, government) and contained a collective memory of war at the national level, which was accompanied by the heroization and symbolization of the Great Victory (in the 1960-1970’s); the third group is represented by sources of personal origin, capable of actualizing the representations of war on specific examples, there is a combination of elements of the previous groups (periods) when, together with the ideological onset of the state on social (historical) memory, the expansion of memory space into everyday life, there is an attempt to return personal memory, inherent in the early (post-war) period, when the emphasis is on sacrifice, not just on the heroization of the events of World War II.

Purpose. The article is aimed to analyse the phenomenon of bodily memory in the context of commemorative practices. The commemorative practices are a social instrument known since archaic times, which had different ways of use in different epochs. In totalitarian societies, officially organized commemorative practices are frequently used for propaganda and manipulation. For most people, their mechanism remains unconscious, as bodily memory plays a leading role there. The density of a modern social world actualises the ability to observe own changes and regulate the processes of their flow. This updates an exploration of the bodily memory phenomenon. Theoretical basis. The classification of forms of bodily memory is carried out in the article: genetic (cellular memory, heredity), psychophysical (memory for different types of sensations, skills, muscle tone, etc.), psychoenergetic (emotions, mental states, mood, unconscious action, etc.), mental (knowledge of the rules of social games, attitudes, stereotypes, thoughts, memories, ways of our detection, behaviour, etc.). It has been revealed that the systemic openness of bodily memory is the fundamental basis of commemorative practices. Originality. The term "conscious commemoration" is proposed to denote the anthropological process associated with self-knowledge, self-construction and co-creation, which requires a distinction between forms of bodily memory, understanding of its structural features and functional capabilities. Conclusions. The phenomenon of bodily memory reveals the anthropological potential of commemorative practices. It can manifest itself as an independently organized body-spiritual practice of self-construction (harmonization of the architecture of one’s own body and individuality) on the basis of self-knowledge and self-observation (directing attention to one’s movements, reactions, behaviour, honest recognition of one’s attitudes). The latter is the foundation of conscious co-creation. The phenomenon of bodily memory reveals the secret of spiritualization in the process of approaching a person to his body.

The commemoration of war is almost as old as war itself – and as war has changed so too has its commemoration. This article explores some of the changes, from the emergence of vernacular forms of memorialization to the process by which objects or practices take on commemorative meaning or, alternately, lose that commemorative meaning. Commercialization has had a significant impact on memorialization and so too has the advent of virtual commemoration, especially through social media. It concludes by surveying some of the challenges that historians of war commemoration may face in the Internet age, even in the face of some striking similarities in the nature of war memorialization.

The objective of the article is to investigate the commemorative practices related to the tragedy in Bazar in the context of the anti-Bolshevik insurgency and Ukrainian emigration of the 1920s–1930s. The methodology of the scientific research is based on the general scientific and special historical methods, taking into account the basic principles of historical world perception: historicism, scientific character, objectivity, systematic approach. The principles of historicism and scientific character have made it possible to reproduce the peculiarities of the commemorative practices associated with the tragedy in Bazar in all its complexity and diversity, interrelation and interdependence with the events of the time. The principle of objectivity is a helpful way to analyze the outlined problem with a critical survey of reference data. The principle of the systematic approach has enabled us to form a coherent picture of the manifestations of the commemorative practices in memory of the victims of the tragedy during the outlined period. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the fact that it examines the events of November 1921 from the standpoint of the historical memory schools for the first time. A great variety of reference data has made it possible to examine the commemorative practices in the memory of the victims of the tragedy in Bazar in a short chronological period from the 1920s and during the 1930s. As a result of the study, the author concludes that the first attempts to commemorate the victims at their burial sites occurred in the early 1920s. The preservation of the memory of the tragedy in Bazar fostered the spread of anti-Bolshevik insurgencies in Zhytomyr region. As the Soviet authorities aimed to destroy the historical memory of the victims of the November 1921 execution, the attempts to preserve it through various commemorative practices were connected with the Ukrainian political emigration abroad (Poland, France, and Czechoslovakia) because the former Ukrainian military as well as the emigration government structures of the UNR were situated there. In the interwar period the commemoration of the tragedy in Bazar was embodied and reflected in the works of fine art. Furthermore, memoirs on both the Second Winter Campaign of the UNR Army and the tragedy in Bazar were published during this time.

This article carries out a long-term exploration of the changing forms of organizing commemorative space in postcolonial Cuba. From a non-representational and processual approach, it argues that there is a close connection between different ideologies, and the social and material organization of commemoration. Because commemorative spaces are socially constituted and embedded in power relations, this study addresses the shifting forms of connecting the subjective and objective sides of memory, that is, how commemoration organizes the relation between people and the materiality of commemorative artefacts. During both the capitalist-republican and communist-revolutionary periods, commemorative spaces were constructed and reworked to renew political hegemony under different premises. These transformations are examined through three conceptual metaphors—text, arena and performance—and three organizing practices—enchantment, emplacement and enactment. The focus is placed on one of the main Cuban commemorational spaces: the Civic Square or Square of the Revolution of Havana.

This essay examines the controversial stories and implications of two memorials built in March 2005 by former boat people from Vietnam on Pulau Bidong (Malaysia) and on Pulau Galang (Indonesia) to commemorate the refugee exodus that ensued after the end of the Vietnam War (April 1975). Tracing the histories and analyzing the contents of these objects, this essay not only illuminates the intertwining social, cultural, political, economic, moral, and spiritual dimensions of contemporary diasporic Vietnamese commemorative practices, but also explains how and why these commemorative practices are entangled in local, national, international, and transnational dynamics and therefore have multilateral impacts.

This article develops recent interpretations of mortuary practices as contexts for producing social memory and personhood to argue that early medieval cairns and mounds served to commemorate concepts of gender and genealogy. Commemorative strategies are identified in the composite character, shape and location of cairns and in their relationship with other commemorative monuments, namely Class I symbol-stones. The argument is developed through a consideration of the excavations of early medieval cists and cairns at Lundin Links in Fife.

The object of this research is the commemorative practices of cultural-historical reconstruction. The subject of this research is the inversion of temporality in festival practices of cultural-historical reconstruction. The goal lies in determination of specificity of temporal representations of historical reenactors through the prism of the concept of inversion of social time. For achieving the set goal, the author carries out a secondary analysis of interviews with the planners and participants of the historical reconstruction festival “Times and Epochs”. The materials of Russian media comprised the empirical basis for this work. Most informative source was portal “The City”, which published interviews with the representatives of historical reconstruction movement from various Russian cities, socio-demographic and professional groups. The novelty of is defined by introduction of the new theoretical and empirical material into the scientific discourse. The memorial culture and cultural-historical reconstruction are viewed as significant and effective factors of collective commemoration from the perspective of temporal approach for the first time. The conducted analysis allowed determining multivariation of the motives and intentions underlying the commemorative practices of cultural-historical reconstruction. The festival “Times and Epochs” is viewed as an example of commemorative practice, where the subject of commemorative activity is the collective past, actualized within metropolitan sociocultural space in terms of the project-network approach. The author reveals the problems of development of the festival as a memorial project, as well as prospects of its integration into the urban environment.

This article explores questions of commemoration in Canadian history from the perspective of two Indigenous historians: one who has engaged in public history through performance art (Anderson) and another who is building a career studying public history (Groat). Our interest lies not only in commemorative acts related to Canadian history that we must resist and reframe but also in questions of how Indigenous peoples might hold place through our own commemorative practices. The article is shaped around recollections of performance art that Anderson has conducted with the public history troupe, the Kika’ige Historical Society – work that evolved in response to celebrations of Canada’s sesquicentennial. We argue that, as demonstrated by the Kika’ige Historical Society, Indigenous peoples have resisted, reframed, and engaged in processes of relationality to create new ways of sharing Indigenous histories. We document Canadian commemorative monuments and acts that have invited resistance from Indigenous peoples. This resistance started in the early twentieth century and has increased exponentially in recent years. Indigenous peoples are now reframing colonial informed commemoration and asserting their own practices that include renaming sites in Indigenous languages, engaging ceremony and public art, and calling for policy change. We celebrate contemporary Indigenous commemorations as relational practices that distinguish themselves by their engagement with the land and the integration of human, natural, and spirit worlds.

This paper considers the politics of how organizations remember their past through commemorative settings and artefacts. Although these may be seen as ‘merely’ a backdrop to organizational activity, they form part of the lived experience of organizational spaces that its members enact on a daily basis as part of their routes and routines. The main concern of the paper is with how commemoration is bound up in the reflection and reproduction of hierarchies of organizational recognition. Illustrated with reference to two commemorative settings, the paper explores how organizations perpetuate a narrow set of symbolic ideals attributing value to particular forms of organizational membership while appearing to devalue others. In doing so, they communicate values that undermine attempts to achieve equality and inclusion. Developing a recognition-based critique of this process, the discussion emphasizes how commemorative settings and practices work to reproduce established patterns of exclusion and marginalization. To this end, traditional forms of commemorative portraiture that tend to close off difference are contrasted with a memorial garden, in order to explore the potential for an alternative, recognition-based ethics of organizational commemoration that is more open to the Other.