Collective Remembering and the Making of Political Culture

Drawing on psychology, sociology, history, and philosophy, this book presents a new theory of how political cultures ranging from the USA to China are built from representations and interpretations of the past. Top-down (societal) and bottom-up (individual-centred) approaches work together to explain how human societies change, and resist change.

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Collective memory can make and break political culture around the world. Representations and reinterpretations of the past intersect with actions that shape the future. A nation's political culture emerges from complex layers of institutional and individual responses to historical events. Society changes and is changed by these layers of memory over time. Understanding them gives us insight into where we are today. Encompassing examples from colonization and decolonization, revolving around the critical junctures of the world wars, this book illustrates how collective memory is produced and organized, through commemoration, through monuments, and through individuals sharing stories. Using concrete examples from around the world, James H. Liu shows how different disciplines can come together through shared concepts like narratives and generational memories to provide mutually enriching perspectives on how political culture is made, and how it changes.