Collective Memory and Social Representations of History

Darío Páez
University of the Basque Country, Spain
Magdalena Bobowik
University of the Basque Country, Spain
James H. Liu
Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
Laurent Licata
Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
Laura de Guissmé
Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium

FIRST DRAFT
Expanded English version of a short chapter that will appear in French at
in G. LoMonaco et al (Eds.).Representations Sociales.

Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation [grant
numbers PSI2008-02689/PSIC PSI2011-26315]; and the University of the Basque
Country [grant number IT-666-13]. This work was also conducted within the
framework of COST Action IS1205 “Social psychological dynamics of historical
representations in the enlarged European Union”.
 Chapter Overview
PART I: CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
Definition and Content of Collective Memory
Functions of Collective Memory
Social representations of Past, Ideology and Science: Objectification, Cognitive
Polyphasia, and Anchoring Processes
Collective Memory and Intergroup Conflict

PART II: A REVIEW OF THEORETICAL AND EMPIRICAL LITERATURE

ON GENERAL TRENDS IN SRH
Collective Memory of Recent Events and Generational Memories
Eurocentrism and Sociocentrism
Negative-positive Asymmetry
Normative Bias
Historiographical Traditions as a Basis for Lay Beliefs about History
Pre-modern representations
Modern representations
Post-modern representations
The dynamics of Social representations of history
La dynamique de la mémoire collective : Passé objectivé ou présent ancré
dans le passé : le cas des representations sociales du passé colonial en Belgique
CHAPTER’S SUMMARY
The aim of this chapter is to define collective memory (CM) and social representations
of history (SRH) and review existing literature and empirical research on these topics.
The chapter is divided in two parts. In the first part, we review a conceptual framework
for the understanding of processes involved in the emergence of social representations
of history. First, we define collective memory and its contents. Next, we explain how
collective memory serves social identity, describing its possible functions for a group.
We also describe the basic processes that determine formation of social representations
of history. We end this part with a relevant example: that is, defining functions of social
representations of history in intergroup conflict. Then, in the second part of the chapter,
we review existing theoretical and empirical evidence on general trends in social
representations of history, focusing on: 1) collective memory of recent events,
generational memories, and conflicting memories, 2) eurocentrism and sociocentrism, 3)
salience of extreme negative events ad long-term positivistic bias, and 4)
historiographical traditions as a basis for lay beliefs about history. We close this chapter
with a summary.

PART I: CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

Definition and Content of Collective Memory

CM consists of vivid, widely shared images and knowledge of past events or
people that have not necessarily been personally experienced, are collectively created and
shared, and serve societal functions (Schuman & Scott, 1989). These CMs (or social
representations of history) are elaborated, transmitted, and conserved by a group
through interpersonal and institutional communication (Jedlowski, 2000; Olick &
Robbins, 1998).
An event in history of a group is collectively commemorated when it fulfills
certain conditions:
1) The historical event is relevant for social identities. Research on flashbulb memories
suggests that collective memories are strongly rooted in social identities and societal
relevance. Flashbulb memories are vivid recollections of the personal circumstances in
which one receives news about a shocking event, such as the assassination of political
leaders, terrorist attacks, disasters, and catastrophes (Páez et al., 2009). For example,
many people remember how was the weather, where they were, or what tune was
playing on the radio when they heard about the 9/11 attacks. Berntsen (2009) has shown
that social identity (or societal) relevance, rather than personal relevance, is central for
the formation and maintenance of flashbulb memories.
2) The historical event has provoked a significant social change or involved a threat to
group identity. Collective memory often consists of shared memories of societal-level
events, especially extreme, intense events that led to important institutional changes
(Connerton, 1989). Importantly, historical events included in collective memory are
usually related to important changes in the social fabric, or to substantial threats to
social cohesion and values, such as the end of American “political innocence” in the
case of the assassination of John F. Kennedy (Pennebaker, Páez & Rimé, 1997), or
more prototypically, the foundation of political system or a state (Hilton & Liu, 2008).
Not all wars are remembered at the same level: WW2 and the Vietnam War are largely
recalled in United States polls as important events, while for Americans the Korean War
is largely forgotten (Griffin, 2005; Neal, 2005). Vietnam and WW2 had a high impact on
institutions and subsequent social changes, whereas Korea was a less socially relevant war
for Americans (but not Koreans). American casualties in the Korean War were similar to
those suffered in Vietnam or in the entire Pacific during the WWII, but, because
American objectives were achieved and the engagement on Korea was perceived
consensually in the United States, the Korean War does not form a useful part of
American collective memories (Neal, 2005). Vietnam was a more collectively traumatic
experience for American society, on the other hand, whereas WW2 changed the United
States’ position in the world order.
3) The historical event is emotion-laden. Collective memory retains extreme negative or
positive events that affect a large number of people as members of a national collective
or other important groups (Neal, 2005). Wars and traumatic events are particularly
emotionally loaded and therefore especially narratable, forming a plot that tells a people
the story of themselves, often in relation to an outgroup and current challenges facing the
ingroup (Liu & László, 2007). Political assassinations such as that of John F. Kennedy,
September 11, natural disasters, or financial crisis are historical events that provoke
intense shared emotions as surprise, anger, sadness, fear and anxiety and subsequently
induce mass media and interpersonally-mediated rehearsal (xxx cite bernard rime’s
work).
4) These historical events are commemorated through rituals as well as institutional
and informal communication. These events are socially shared, by means of
commemoratory rituals, of institutional narratives, mass media and interpersonal
rehearsal. Events like September 11, disasters and political assassinations and crisis,
which provoke intense shared emotions such as surprise, anger, sadness, fear and
anxiety, also induce participation in collective behaviors and rituals, like political
demonstrations, worship and funerary rituals. These collective strands may be woven
together as a fabric to pattern the creation and maintenance of collective memory (Neal,
2005; Páez, Rimé & Basabe, 2005). As a paradigmatic example, in the case of John F.
Kennedy’s assassination: “The nation was engrossed in television coverage of the
funeral ceremony...and the subsequent funeral procession to Arlington” (Neal, 2005,
p.108). Collective rituals are particularly effective in maintaining collective memories.
These rituals, through their form and content, are effective in reminding the event
through the repetitive re-activation of the cognitive representation. However, rites are
more than reminders, they are re-enactments of the event (Connerton, 1989) and, as
such, they also engage bodies. In collective emotional gatherings, people perform the
same gestures, adopt the same postures, sing the same songs. This synchrony leads to an
important social sharing of emotions, to the point of eliciting feelings of “identity
fusion”. This experience then revives the common identity and the beliefs associated
with it (Páez & Rimé, 2014).
Institutional narratives or written accounts of the distant or close past of nations
are very influential in shaping and maintaining a sense of national identity. These
narratives are not univocal: they are debated and contested in the public sphere, where
several versions of the same events often compete (Jovchelovitch, 2012; Reicher and
Hopkins, 2001). But this very process of contestation ensures that the memory of the
event is kept alive. Laszlo and colleagues (2013) have studied the historical trajectories
of nations as remembered by lay people. For example, they showed that the history of
Hungary is remembered as a story of grandeur (anti-Ottoman, then anti-Austrian fights)
followed by decline (Trianon Treaty, wars), then by a slow but incomplete redress (end
of Soviet rule). Hungarian collective memory is familiar with the “First victory, then
failure” pattern, but not with the “Failure, then victory” one, which prevents Hungarians
from making sense of the fall of the Berlin wall as this rather belongs to the latter, more
unfamiliar narrative schema (see also, Wertsch, 200x).People often talk about past
events that had important consequences for their social group. These conversations can
thus be instrumental in the spreading of memories across the group (Coman et al, 2007).
For example, individual memories of family members were collected before and after a
conversation about a story they had just read. Individual recollections were much more
similar after than before the collective remembering, and that story details that were
shared during the conversation were disproportionately included in individual accounts
of the story. Conversely, collective remembering can also lead to the forgetting of some
elements of a narrative: listening to someone who communicates some items of a
narrative, but fails to communicate other related items, facilitates recall of the
communicated items while inhibiting the recall of unmentioned ones (Stone et al., 2010;
see also Kashima, 2000 for use of Barlett’s serial reproduction paradigm in forming and
maintaining stereotypes).
5) The commemoration of this historical event serves current needs and goals. That is,
collective memory or social representations of the past are mobilized to serve current
attitudes and needs (Reicher & Hopkins, 2001; Liu & Hilton, 2005). One example that
collective memory is instrumental for the functioning of the nation could the following: In
1985 30% of USA citizens mentioned WWII as an important historical event; this
dropped to 20% in 2000, but following the September 11 bombing, the percentage rose to
28%, in a “resurrection” of WWII as an historical event in the context of the current
political atmosphere if combatting international terrorist violence (Schuman & Rodgers,
2004). In other words, one should expect that changes in the social political context in
which group members live should also bring changes in the way they remember their
group’s past. More precisely, collective memories that fulfil a function in a particular
social context should gradually disappear when changes in this context render them
irrelevant. Below we describe possible functions that collective memory may have for a
social group.

Functions of Collective Memory

According to the sociologist Maurice Halbwachs, CM “retains from the past
only what still lives or is capable of living in the consciousness of the groups keeping
the memory alive’ (Halbwachs, 1950/1980, p. 80). Similarly, Frederic Bartlett, who
introduced memory studies in psychology, stated that “with the individual as with the
group, the past is continually re-made, reconstructed as a function of present interests”
(1932, p. 309). In other words, CM fulfills various functions, all of them related to
social identity. CM 1) defines the group and its continuity, 2) defines group values and
norms, 3) enhances group cohesion, 4) sets the group’s value, 5) legitimizes group
behavior, 6) mobilizes the group, and 7) influences present psychological states of
group members (see Klein et al., 2011; Liu & Hilton, 2005; Pennebaker, Páez, & Rimé,
1997; Jodelet & Haas, 2014). We now review each of these functions.
1) Defining the group and its continuity: Collective memories are crucial in defining,
maintaining, and mobilizing social identities. CM helps to preserve a sense of
continuity and therefore to define group membership (Pennebaker, Páez, & Rimé, 1997;
cite Fabio Sani’s work, & Michelle Gezentsvey’s work). According to Liu and Hilton
(2005, p. 537), “History provides us with narratives that tell us who we are, where we
came from and where we should be going defines a trajectory which helps construct the
essence of a group’s identity, how it relates to other groups, and ascertains what its
options are for facing present challenges. It defines a trajectory which helps construct
the essence of a group’s identity, how it relates to other groups, and ascertains what its
options are for facing present challenges”. Representations of the group’s past, which
are constantly renegotiated as a function of the present situation, thus provide content to
the social identity. For example, Barack Obama began his second inaugural address (21
January 2013) by reminding Americans of the principles of equality and freedom on
which the USA were founded. Then he emphasized the continuity of their history:
“Today we continue a never-ending journey, to bridge the meaning of those words with
the realities of our time” (White House, 2013).
2) Defining group values and norms. CM defines how that group should behave, to
feed values and norms. Paralleling Malinowski’s views on myths, Liu and Hilton (2005)
contend that social representations of history serve as “charters” that define how the
group should react to a present situation, because group members draw a “moral” from
their interpretation of a past event. A recent chapter by Liu & Khan (2014) examined
how Gandhi, Nehru, and their Indian nationalist competitors Savarkar and Golwarkar
acted as identity entrepreneurs to mobilize slightly different versions of India’s history
to promote different group values and different boundaries for who is included within or
excluded from the category of Indian. For Gandhi, Muslims were included within a
romanticized reading of Indian history where all the different peoples of India lived in
peace, and for both Gandhi and Nehru, Muslims were included and the British
colonizers excluded. Savarkar and Golwarkar, on the other hand, emphasized the
exclusion of Muslims, and emphasized more warlike group values where fighting off
Muslim aggresion in history was essential to protecting in-group values and classic
(Vedic) culture.
3) Enhancing group cohesion. The simple fact that those representations are shared
brings a sense of cohesion to group members. Thus, this co-constructed past
simultaneously creates a ‘horizontal’ solidarity between contemporary group members
and a ‘vertical’ solidarity with past and future members of the group (cite Jolanda Jetten
& Hutchinson’s work on continuity w/past). In brief, sharing representations of the
group’s past confers psychological reality to that group. In particular, representing the
group as continuous through time facilitates identification with it (Sani, 2008).
Conversely, presenting the group’s history as discontinuous may elicit collective angst
regarding the group’s future, which can lead to group protective attitudes, such as
opposing immigration (Jetten & Wohl, 2012; Smeekes & Verkuyten, 2013).
4) Setting the group’s value. A positive image of the ingroup past (its successes and
failures and its moral or immoral actions) contribute to defining its relative value. Social
groups thus compare their respective pasts, and generally strive to derive a positive
sense of their identity through this comparison. This helps explain why collective
memories are often biased towards positive accounts of the in-group’s past and/or
negative accounts of out-groups’ actions in history (Baumeister & Hastings, 1997). In
addition, it accounts for the fact that some representations of the group’s past – such as
reminders of past misdeeds – elicit strong defensive reactions (Branscombe & Doosje,
2004) and thus have negative effects on intergroup relations (Rotella, & Richeson,
2013). Such defensive responses reflect people’s natural tendency to minimize the
outgroup’s suffering, to justify the ingroup’s aggressive behavior, and to enhance the
ingroup’s narrative of “heroes and martyrs”. Another example of defensive response is
the long time absence of reminders of JFK assassination in Dallas (Pennebaker &
Basanik, 1997) or the “silence” about the presence of the Petain´s collaborationist
government in Vichy – inhabitants when asked about historical events mentions the
aristocratic past of the city as a “pleasant ville” during Napoleon III (Jodelet & Haas,
2014).
Recently, there has been research on competitive victimhood (see Noor, Shnabel,
Halabi, & Nadler, 2012), where contrary to the more typical pattern of exaggerating the
in-group’s glorious past and minimizing its misdeeds, each group focuses on instead on
inglorious acts attributed to the competing out-group that provides an explanation for
the in-group’s current (difficult) situation and represents an attempt to restore the in-
group’s power and moral acceptance by casting blame on the out-group.
5) Legitimizing group behavior. CM legitimizes past, present, or planned actions of the
group. For example, Serb nationalists referred to memories of the Kosovo battle in
1389, after which the Serbs had lost control over Kosovar territory, in order to
legitimize the deportation of Muslim Kosovars in the 1990’s. In a similar vein, a study
showed that, among Hindu and Sikh respondents, high in-group identifiers tended to
recall fewer incidents of in-group violence against the out-group than low identifiers
(Sahdra & Ross, 2007). Another study conducted among Christian Maronite
participants in Lebanon also showed that their level of identification with the Maronite
in-group was associated with more attribution of responsibility for the civil war to
Muslims, whereas identification with the superordinate Lebanese group had the
opposite effect. In turn, these memories were associated with more negative attitudes
towards contemporary Muslims (Licata, Klein, Saade, Azzi, & Branscombe, 2012).
Another study has shown that legitimizing representations of past predicted negatively
agreement with reparations (Klein, Licata & Pierucci, 2011). In a similar vein, a study
based on country-level data showed that directly or indirectly victorious in WWII
nations endorsed legitimizing representations of world wars more than defeated nations
and therefore were more accepting of future collective violence (Bobowik et al, 2014).
Together, social representations legitimizing past collective violence may to facilitate
more positive attitudes towards potential future collective violence and undermine
reconciliation processes in post-conflict contexts.
6) Mobilizing the in-group. CMs can be used to mobilize members of a social group to
accomplish a particular collective – often political – project in the name of their shared
identity (Reicher & Hopkins, 2001). For example, the Congolese leader Patrice
Lumumba adapted his discourse as a function of the audience he was addressing: in
front of a Congolese audience, he would represent the history of colonization as
undermined by the Belgians’ cupidity and contempt whereas, in front of a Belgian
audience, he would emphasize the friendship that the colonial experience had allowed to
build between the two nations. Far from being a simple example of opportunism, this
apparent lack of coherence actually reflected a stable political project, which demanded
different actions from different actors. Hence, he had to mobilize the Congolese against
the paternalistic colonial ideology, as well as make sure that the Belgians would
collaborate with the new independent State (Klein & Licata, 2003).
7) Influencing present psychological states of group members. A great deal of
attention has been devoted to the group-based emotions that are triggered by reminders
of the in-group’s past immoral actions (Branscombe & Doosje, 2004; Iyer & Leach,
2008). For instance, the acknowledgement of ingroup responsibility for past misdeeds
may be particularly threatening for high identifiers (Doosje et al., 1998) and thus
provoke defensive reactions aimed at avoiding collective guilt (Klein et al., 2011). In
addition, empirical research has confirmed that depending on the types of framing, the
narratives may hinder (Kus, 2013; Smeekes et al., 2011) or improve (Adwan & Bar-On,
2004; Bar-On & Kassem, 2004; Bilewicz & Jaworska, 2013) intergroup relations.
For instance, memories of past collective victimisation influence current intergroup
attitudes (Noor, Shnabel, Halabi, & Nadler, 2012; Rouhana & Bar-Tal, 1998; Vollhardt,
2008).

Collective Memory and Intergroup Conflict

A particularly relevant for society example of collective memory is collective
memory of conflict. Collective memory of conflict describes the outbreak of the conflict
and its course, providing a picture of what has happened from the societal perspective
(Bar-Tal, 2013). Societies involved in long-term and/or intractable conflict develop a
psychological infrastructure in order to meet the psychological challenges related to the
conflict. Essential to this societal coping is the formal and informal collective memory
of conflict, usually associated with a set of self-serving narratives and attributions about
the conflict, and collective emotions of hatred, fear, anger and pride (Bar-Tal, 1990).
Bar-Tal’s model of collective remembering is based on functional characteristics of
intractable conflict: the suffering, hardship, uncertainty, and suffering of the in-group
caused by intractable conflict with an out-group furnishes a people with collective
challenges in terms of satisfying needs, coping with stress, and withstanding the enemy
(Bar-Tal, 2007, p. 1437).
Social representations of past focused on “chosen traumas” and negative events
are often responsible for a collective emotional orientation where fear overrides hope in
conflict ridden societies. A perpetual feeling of threat gives rise to high levels of fear,
and hatred for the outgroup, that is reinforced with each ritual that remembers one’s
own dead while ignoring those suffered by the other group. This produces a narrative of
one’s own suffering that justifies one’s own agenda while delegitimizing that of the
other (Bar-Tal, 2007). Rosoux (2001), focused on Germany and France in the 19th
century, where from 1870 on, French and Germans began to define one another by
mutual enmity that only began to abate after two World Wars. While this conflict was
not “intractable” in Bar-Tal’s terms (there was little collective violence between
Germany and France in the decades from the Franco-Prussian War to WWI), consistent
with Bar-Tal, Rosoux (2001) found a series of common features of social
representations of past that fed into one of the most violent conflicts of all-time. These
social representations of past wars illustrate the functions of collective memory of
conflict:
1) They explain and justify the outbreak of the conflict and the course of its
development. Ontological differences were held to exist between France and Germany,
intergroup relationships were marked by natural hostility and mistrust, with each
country being the natural and hereditary enemy of other. Qualitative research by Kus,
Liu, & Ward (2013) showed that ethnic Russians and ethnic Estonians used history in
polemical ways to justify their own political positions regarding what should be a just
set of social outcomes for people living in the current state of Estonia (where Russians
now are a 30% minority, but were formerly the dominant group within the Soviet
Empire), and to delegitimize the opposing group’s views. Typically, such views are held
between nations, but in the case of Estonia, a recent power reversal has left both the
dominant group and the minority group with representational resources to contest
against one another. In most countries, the dominant group’s view of history is pre-
eminent (but see the unusual, post-colonial case of New Zealand as reported in Liu,
Wilson, McClure, & Higgins, 1999).
2) They present the ingroup in a positive light. We represent or define our national in-
group as a victim (We, Serbians, excluded, discriminated and attacked from the Middle
Age to World Wars); our heroes, martyrs and epic battles are remembered. “Our”
shameful past war episodes are concealed; References to others as victims, civilians
killed and suffering are concealed. Even in the case of defeated nations, like Germany
and Japan after WWII, people share and remember their own suffering, but, conceal,
silence or ignore other people’s suffering (Buruma, 2002; Hein & Selden, 2000).
Germany and Japan are not equal, however, as historical conflict and lack of forgiveness
among victimized WWII nations is much stronger in Asia than in Europe (Hanke, et al.,
2013). Accounts of WWII war crimes are still very much contested between Japan and
China (Liu & Atsumi, 2008), whereas thankfully between Germany and France historical
conflict has subsided. Memorials, monuments and textbooks often gloss over the
tragedies of collective violence, and the horrors of war are displaced by emphasis on
heroes, glory, and justification of sacrifices. Death and destruction are re-evaluated
within the sacred task of defending the nation- but this varies from state to state, with
post-War Germany and Japan generally loath to do this in the service of WWII.
3) They describe the outgroup in delegitimizing ways. Usually a negative image of the
outgroup justifies violence. National outgroups are defined as aggressors or perpetrators
and the responsibility and guilt of real or symbolic current and past injuries are
attributed to these social categories (they, Croatians nazis and Muslims fascists
collaborators, killed our people and commit genocide in the W.W.II); Attributions of
collective guilt are also a weapon in ideological struggle. For instance, racial
representations of war and conflict are a factor reinforcing intense collective violence.
Negation of the other as human being, an image of the other as inferior or with animal
traits, low or deficient morality, was associated to high tolls of death in Mexican
American war, war with Native Americans, colonial wars, and the Pacific and Eastern
fronts in WW2, in comparison with the American civil war or the West front in WW1
(Neal, 2005). Other authors suggest that some features of these collective
representations are always at least partially present in violent collective conflicts: for
instance Confederate southerners constructed a Yankee race (McPherson, 2008).
Normal petit bourgeois non voluntary soldiers not sharing strongly negative stereotypes
nor having received ideological indoctrination have been shown to participate in
genocide (Browning, 1998; Páez & Liu, 2011).
4) Aggression against enemies is portrayed as a manner to repay injuries suffered by
the nation. Recalling past persecutions and martyrs imposes the duty of fidelity and
justifies revenge against evil-doers. Aggression against enemies is portrayed as a manner
to repay injuries suffered by the nation. Retaliation appears as legitimate, and social
representations reinforce inter-group aggressive action tendencies, war and collective
violence being only a rational and justified response to past aggression of the out-groups
and in-group suffering (Rosoux, 2001).War becomes a legitimate form of honoring the
memory of ancestors and victims (Rosoux, 2001). Hence, these types of social
representations glorifying war should lead to positive attitudes towards war, backed by
cultural norms favoring a willingness to fight in future wars at the collective level.
Together, such representations of past collective violence fuel further conflict.
As Liu and Hilton (2005) state: “a group’s representation of its history can explain how its
world has come to be the way it is and justify its responses to current challenges” (p. 53).
In the case of victorious nations, like USA and Russia, WW2 is represented as a Just War,
or a “Great Patriotic War” (Wertsch, 2002) Hence, victory in war and glorifying war,
lead to a shared positive attitude towards war or a cultural norm (e.g. a willingness to
fight in future wars at the collective level)—this appears to be a general characteristic of
the collective remembering of warfare, not restricted to societies in intractable conflict.
At the national level and also at individual level, the collective remembering of
war associated with willingness to fight in current conflicts. Confirming these ideas, Páez
et al. (2007) found that vicarious collective remembering contributing to a legitimization
of war: young people in victorious nations reported higher recall of WW2 memories, a
less negative evaluation of this event and expressed more willingness to fight in a new
war for the motherland. A larger cross-cultural survey in around 30 nations and 6000
participants confirms that a less negative evaluation of historical calamities (including
the world wars) is associated with greater willingness to fight in future conflicts (Liu et
al, 2012). Moreover a disagreement with WW2 as social catastrophe and agreement
with the meaning of WWII as less negative, a just and necessary war was associated to
more willingness to fight in a new war for the motherland (Bobowik et al., 2014).

Social representations of Past, Ideology and Science: Objectification, Cognitive

Polyphasia, and Anchoring Processes
Importantly, through social representations, lay beliefs in fact assimilate more
elaborated, frequently scientific or philosophical, discourses (Jodelet, 2006). Different
historiographical traditions play a part in reflecting different images of the world’s past
.On the other hand, these lay historical narratives frequently reflect also national
narratives transmitted by history textbooks and teachers. Therefore, such links between
social representations and history education such as the application of processes of
anchoring and objectification are relevant (Lautier, 2001; Jodelet, 2011; Tutiaux-
Guillon, 2012).
 The process of objectification turns something abstract is into something almost
concrete (Jodelet & Haas, 2014). . These processes of objectification are present in
historical understanding: events are reified in figures (like Columbus who represents
“Discovery” or Hitler the Nazi evil in WWII) and images (Columbus’s three ships is the
figurative image of Discovery, Lautier, 2001) Flags, gestures and emblems are
prototypical tools that afford the objectification of ideologies, symbolizing most
important meanings and evoking collective emotions. The examples of biases based on
objectification processes in this review could be ascribing special importance and
positive characteristics to national historical figures (idolization) or commemoration of
specific historical events marking social change. They can take the form of monuments
or rituals celebrating events like VE (WWII Victory in Europe) day, or the Battle of
Gallipoli (WWI).
In turn, anchoring involves the ascribing of meaning to new information (i.e.
history education) by means of integrating it into existing worldviews, so it can be
interpreted and compared to the "already known”. (Jodelet & Haas, 2014). Anchoring
implies a cognitive process wherein new social objects are integrated into the pre-
existing patterns of representation (September 11th is like Pearl Harbour and Saddam
Hussein is like Hitler, see Spellman & Holyoak, 1994?xxx for an example of the
analogical transfer process) and second, it involves a social aspect in which a group
gives meaning to a representation (war against terrorism is a just and necessary war, like
WWII) (see Jodelet, 2006). The example of Second World War helps to illustrate the
process of anchoring. WWII is a main feature of the social representations of history
because it is frequently associated with world history and is usually the top listed event
in free-recall task (see Liu et al., 2005; 2009) – two characteristics of events forming the
central nucleus of a social representation (Abric, 1994). WWII is linked to the
anchoring processes of social representations of history. WWII not only forms part of
the main nucleus of social representations of history, but also serves as an “anchor” or
central point when generating new meanings for more current events entering into
public life. Perceiving WWII as a just and necessary war could anchor a stoic view of
history, which implies a higher acceptance of social and natural calamities (WWII and I,
Depression, Tsunami etc.). On the other hand, general values, together with historical
experience, frame and help nations to attribute coherent meaning to a specific event like
WWII (Bobowik et al., 2014). In addition, existing empirical evidence suggests that
students learning about historical issues also anchor the information they receive in their
experience, group membership, and values. That is, young migrants are less interested
in European nations’ history than majority youth, and Muslim young migrants are more
critical about Holocaust issues, and construct analogies between Crusades, WWII
conflicts and the current Israel-Palestinian conflict (Grever, 2012; Lautier, 2001).
Finally, cognitive polyphasia implies a dynamic co-existence of distinct modalities of
knowledge. That is, cognitive polyphasia permits the coexistence of analytical,
systematic, logical and an heuristic, intuitive, pre-logical thinking, or causal/scientific
and “magical” thinking (Moscovici, 1976). Cognitive polyphasia could be involved in
overcoming barriers to historical consciousness and perspective-taking in history
education. Leone and Sarrica (2014) for example show how a hard-edged description of
Italian war crimes under Mussolini can be presented to Italian youth in a manner that
forces them to confront a distasteful past, but this might not be able to overcome the
dominant cultural representation that presents Italian fascism as less horrific than that of
the Nazis. Leone and Sarrica (2014) show that subtle changes in the wording of
historical accounts of Italy’s fascist past produced different emotional reactions among
Italian youths. Thus, changes to the way the such a negative past is perceived could take
a multi-layered course over time and space.
Cognitive polyphasia also implies the coexistence of traditional and modern or
scientific view of history in the same subject and groups – as when nurses and
physicians scientifically trained believes in “alternative medicine” cognitive polyphasia
which permits coexistence of apparently conflicting meta-schematas. In the context of
lay representations of history subjects share at the same time a causal or technological
view of history, a view of history as fueled by economic development – a structural
modern scientific view- with , and an individualistic view of history in which great
leaders are an important causal force – a romatic and pre modern view of history. In any
case, even scholarship historians and sophisticated thinkers try to compatibilize these
approaches (see Bujarin, 1925 for a classical discussion)..

PART II: A REVIEW OF THEORETICAL AND EMPIRICAL LITERATURE

ON SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS OF HISTORY

General trends in SRH

Collective Memory of Recent Events, Generational Memories, and Conflict
Memories

Recency bias
Still, recent and direct historical experience will be usually activated to shape
attitudes and needs because people have more accessible in their memories “fresh events”
that are anchored on direct experience and communicative memory or face-to-face
interaction. Overall, it is important to note that people remember recent history better.
Surveys on important world’s event have shown that people usually recall relatively
recent historical events (Liu et al., 2005; 2009), being three generations is the maximum
for people to retain vividly historical events. This idea of communicative history
(Assman, 1992, quoted in Moller, 2012) has antecedents in the classic ancient writers:
Aeschylus posits in his play “The Persians” that a war or an episode of collective
violence transmits a lesson for three generations. The span of communicative memory is
about 80-100 years, three or four generations, and this explains why WWII has been an
important events for collective memory. Studies have confirmed that when asked about
important political events lived by relatives (Pennebaker, Páez, & Rimé, 1997), or about
genealogical knowledge and relatives’ information, most people provide information
about the experience of two or three generations (Candau, 2005). Britons were more
likely to remember WWII than were Americans by a margin of 16%, probably because
the British experienced the war much more directly and personally (Scott & Zac, 1993).
Generational Memories
A characteristic example of communicative memory is the generational
memory, shared with contemporaries: social events are remembered particularly if they
happen during one's adolescence and early adulthood, a time which seems to be a
formative period in one’s social identity and of cultural enculturation. Mannheim
(1928/1952) precisely defined a generation as a group of people with similar
perceptions and similar memories. He stressed that different generations have different
memories of the historical past. As a consequence, collective memories can vary from
one generation to the next as a function of the social reality in which members of each
generation grow up. Empirical evidence has confirmed that persons remember better
historical and collective events experienced during adolescence or early adulthood. For
instance, in 1989 older Americans mentioned the Great Depression and WWII more as an
important historical event, whereas younger participants mentioned more frequently
JFK’s assassination and the Vietnam War, in both cases being events that had occurred
during participants’ early adulthood (Schuman, Belli & Bischoping, 1997). In an
investigation conducted in line with Mannheim's (1928/1952) concept, Schuman and
Scott (1989) concluded that ‘age is clearly the most general predictor of memories for
events and changes over the past 50 years and (…) age represents cohort effects which
in turn have their origins in adolescence and early adulthood’ (Schuman & Scott, 1989,
p. 371). In a study with a large sample of Dutch respondents, Ester et al. (2000) noted
that recollection of events did not differ between the Dutch generations. However, the
interpretation and attribution of significance of these events did. Licata and Klein
(2010) also showed that representations of the colonisation of the Congo were markedly
different over three generations of Belgians. Young adults mainly retained CMs of the
ruthless exploitation of the Congolese by the Belgians, whereas grandparents held a
paternalistic representation of colonialism. Parents stood between these opposing trends.
Finally, another study confirms the relevance of cohort or generational experience for
collective memories of victimhood in Belgium (Rime et al., 2015). This study surveyed
three generations differing in experience of the Belgian State (unitary State;
federalisation process; federal State) during their formative years, comparing a sample
of 1226 French- and 1457 Dutch-speaking individuals. For both groups, younger
generations evidenced less regionalist and more integrative positions than older ones.
However, as expected because Dutch Belgium lives an important social change that
improve socioeconomic status of this region, these effects were stronger for Dutch-
speaking respondents and, for them, collective memory of victimhood was lower in the
most recent generation and mediated the relation linking age and identification with
Belgium, intergroup attitudes, and political views. Authors concluded that the current
social context has decisive consequences for collective remembrances, which, in turn,
impact intergroup relations as well as political attitudes and choices.
Conflicting Memories
Finally, an important point related to the collective memory dynamics for the
significance of historical events is also the frequent conflict between different memories
of the same events and between official and informal memory. For instance, in the case
of Germany, the official or institutional position assumes the responsibility of the nation
in the WWII crimes of war. However, in a survey dated in 2000, only 30% agreed with
a statement that “German citizens supported the Nazis and were involved”. Forty
percent of participants agreed that German people were passive bystanders, 23% that
they were victims of the Nazis, 51% agreed with putting a final line over past, whereas
less than a half (41%) agreed with a necessity to continue the debate over the topic
(Langenbacher, 2003 in Páez & Liu, 2012). In a similar vein, research has shown that
grandchildren of Germans living as adults in WWII tend to share a more positive view
of their grandparents roles during the war than the grandparents themselves (Moller,
2012). In spite of institutional self-criticism, the trials by German judges, and
establishing of laws against the denial of Holocaust and crimes against the humankind,
informal public opinion in Germany rejects collective guilt and agrees with forgetting
the negative past.

Negative-positive Asymmetry
Negative Bias
Wars, political and military leaders are also cross-culturally perceived as
historically significant. Revolutions and wars are mentioned in the world history (Liu et
al, 2009) or in the last millennium (Pennebaker et al., 2006) as the most important
events, whereas science and technology, including the industrial revolution, are
secondary in importance. In 24 nations from America, Europe and Asia warfare and
collective violence accounted for 48% and politics accounted for 27% of events
nominated as important, whereas 45% of leaders named where known for their roles in
wars and other collective violence events (Liu et al., 2009). Even though wars produced
only 2% of the 20th century death toll (Layard, 2005), people tend to stress the role of
political violence in world history because of the catastrophic impact extreme and
negative events like wars have. Anchoring violence as a main factor in social
representations of history is congruent with 19th-century historiography, where
academic historians shared a romantic approach based on German idealistic philosophy,
rejecting the principle of laws and causality in history and concentrated on idiographic
descriptions of political and war events and “great men”. For instance, the German
historian von Ranke perceived states as “thoughts of good” and wars as main agents for
change, arguing that only in war a nation becomes a nation and without war there would
be no state (Iggers, Wang, & Mukherjee 2008). These SR are also congruent with the
dominance of violence and drama in mass media and historical textbooks: usually
wartime periods receive higher amount of attention in historical texts (Zerubavel, 2003;
Pingel, 2000).
Positive Bias
Still, showing the hegemony of a positivistic view of history among lay people,
studies on recall of important historical events show that old or long-term events were
better evaluated than similar recent ones (Bobowik et al., 2010). People overemphasized
mixed or positive long-term events, such as the New World Discovery, French and
Industrial Revolutions, and overlooked less positive events, being among them such an
important event as the Thirty Years` War. Evaluation ratings also confirmed this long-
term positivistic bias. For instance, the French Revolution was evaluated positively,
suggesting that either people “forgot” about the terror, Napoleonic Wars and massacres,
or that ample time had passed allowing individuals to reinterpret the events of that war.
This is congruent with the psychological long-term tendency to minimize negative
stimuli. People remember a higher proportion of positive events than negative events in
the long-term and to reinterpret negative events to be at least neutral or even positive
(Taylor, 1991). Studies that compare autobiographical memories of younger and elder
people or analyze within subject’s comparisons between recent and more distant events
also confirm a positivistic bias: increased age or longer periods of recalling are
associated to more positive appraisal of events (Laurens, 2002). There are also a strong
association between positive than negative events and affect, and the attribution of
meaning and long-term wellbeing, as well as a tendency to communicate more positive
than negative information, including in commemorations, monuments and public rituals
(Pennebaker, Páez & Rimé, 1997).
Hanke et al. (in press) found that ancient “villains” like Genghis Khan, were
evaluated at the neutral point across a variety of cultures, whereas 20th century villains
like Hitler or Osama bin Laden were perceived much more negatively.

Eurocentrism and Sociocentrism

Eurocentrism
Studies based on both open-ended nominations and close-ended evaluations
applied to determine the most important figures and events in world history found a
large degree of cross-national consensus that European history and Western cultural
events are considered to be most historical significant (Glowsky, Ellerman, Kromeier,
& Andorfer, 2007; Liu et al., 2009; Pennebaker, Páez, & Deschamps, 2006). Events
recalled as important for world history are predominantly related to Europe (e.g. New
World Discovery) or Europe and North America (e.g. World wars) or simply are
European events, such as French Revolution or Lutheran reform (Pennebaker et al.,
2006). Noticeably, these historical events figures are also generally rated as more
positive than non- Euro/North American-centric ones (Liu et al., 2005; Pennebaker et
al., 2006; Glowsky et al., 2008; Hanke et al., in press). Needless to say, this is
congruent with studies that suggest in relatively open form (in the Americas) or in a
more sophisticated and politically correct form the content of history book are focused
on the ingroup and mainly Western history (Tutiaux-Guillon, 2012; Lopez & Carretero,
2012). This suggests that the dominant representations of history are the representations
of dominant culture and they reflect the representational power of the West.
Sociocentrism in Defining What’s Historically Significant
Research has also revealed a partial tendency towards sociocentrism in defining
what is historically significant. Respondents across nations also tend to display a local
orientation in their perception of important events in world’s history (e.g. Bobowik et
al., 2010). That is, each country tends to consider nationally relevant historical events as
more important than those events that did not refer to the country. For instance, in
Spain, participants rated the Spanish Civil War as the most important event of the
century while the U.S. participants listed the American Civil War as one of the most
important events of the last millennium. Overall, Western countries reported very few
events which occurred outside of their own region as those which contribute to the
world history. Similarly, participants from non-Western countries exhibited
ethnocentrism with respect to the events related to the creation of their own state (Liu et
al., 2009). African nations generally devalued the events linked to European, American
or Asian history. Decolonization was in general positively rated but it was rated more
positively and as more important in African nations (for details about African views of
world history, see Cabecinhas et al., 2011). These more extreme ratings of valence and
importance could be explained by the fact those countries were involved in more recent
decolonization, confirming that people anchor their representations of history in their
current experiences and interests. These results are also concordant with a study finding
that in East Timor people listed only one typically Eurocentric event, World War II,
among top ten most important events, while the rest of the list where rather ethnocentric
and very recent events, directly affecting East Timor´s short history (Liu et al., 2009).
Still, the sociocentric bias in nomination historically significant events does not hold for
all nations. For instance in Switzerland, with the partial exception of Lutheran reform,
no national event is mentioned as relevant for the world history probably because Swiss
are aware of their relative “weakness” in terms of historical capital (Pennebaker et al.,
2006). A lack of formal education may have been responsible for the hyper-ethnocentric
views presented by East Timorese in Liu et al. (2009)’s study, whereas the Swiss
education system is much more structured.
Sociocentrism in Defining Who’s Historically Significant
Sociocentrism is also evident in nominations of important historical figures (e g.
Bobowik et al., 2010). As for historical heroes, for instance Nelson Mandela was
positively evaluated in general but was evaluated in Africa as a more positive and
important leader than in the rest of the continents. Among the most important figures,
Ukrainians mention Victor Yushchenko and Julia Timoshenko and Poles indicate Lech
Walesa and Joseph Pilsudski (Liu et al., 2009). People therefore tend to worship
ingroup’s heroes more than universal or outgroups’ heroes. The same rule applies to
some extent to villains. For instance, Spaniards mentioned Francisco Franco and
Portuguese Antonio Salazar among top ten important figures of world’s history. Still,
data did not support socio-centrism for the Latin American icon Che Guevara: ratings of
valence and importance were positive in general but less positive in Latin American
nations than in European and African nations, giving support to the idea that the image
of Guevara is rather a worldwide symbol of fight against social injustice, than an
ethnocentric Latin American historical leader.
However despite these ethnocentric biases in nominations, a large multi-national
study by Hanke et al. (in press) also revealed some consistencies in evaluation:
scientific and humanitarian figures (like Einstein, or Mother Theresa) were rated most
highly, more highly than war heroes like Lincoln or Churchill.
Normative Bias / Anchoring
Finally, collective memories or social representations of past are related to
general norms and meaning structures prevalent in a societal context. For instance, a
representative survey found that Spaniards who name Che Guevara as an important
Latin-American historical figure are not only young, but also highly educated, left-
wing, espouse post-materialist and post-traditionalist values, and identify more with
Basque and Catalonian nationalism than with Spain (Larson & Lizardo, 2007).

Historiographical Traditions as a Basis for Lay Beliefs about History

Following the rationale of social representations theory and studies which
demonstrated that widespread beliefs often function as “scientific legends” (Bangerter
& Heath, 2004; Jodelet, 2006), lay beliefs concerning history are expected to reflect
scientific, philosophical or sociological theories exploring the sense of history. That is,
the lay public receives, re-elaborates, and circulates more formalized knowledge, such
as theories of history, in the form of social representations. Different historiographical
traditions have played an important role in the construction of a shared image of the
past. We review these sources of lay beliefs about history chronologically, following a
recent review of historiography which proposes three systems of historicity (Delacroix,
Dosse, Garcia, & Offendstat, 2010). We have selected those ideas which we have found
to embrace the most relevant and widespread points of view (see Dager, 2009; Igger et
al., 2008).
Pre-modern Representations of History
According to the old or ancient system, the past is the most important facet of
history and the source and the guide of the present (Delacroix et al., 2010). Under this
system, we describe three clusters of representations of history: 1) history as a divine
plan, 2) history as an “eternal retour” or a cycle of rise and fall, and 3) History as
determined by an act of great men and women (i.e. “great men theory”).
A Divine Plan as the Oldest Representations of History
The oldest attempts to explain history delineate it as a plan of gods (Bujarin,
1925/1974). These representations of history were present across different cultures
starting in ancient times but prevailing till recent centuries. Both Christian and Islamic
medieval historians presented God as the starting and the end point of history whereas
human agency in these times was completely excluded from historiography (Iggers et
al., 2008). Even 19th century historians included in their works the religious explanation
of the course of history (see below about Ranke). In addition, not only Christianity and
Islam but also Buddhism emphasizes the idea that the world is “a vale of tears” where
suffering, by abandoning craving and delusion, is compensated in life after death
(Armstrong, 2001; Romero, 2009). In present times, it is also probable that an
individual’s personal philosophy of history will be affected by faith in God and belief in
a divine plan as underlying the vicissitudes of history. Confirming that these beliefs are
related to monotheistic religions, survey data indicate that agreement with the religious
conception of history as a divine plan is associated with apositive evaluation of the
foundation of the major religions, Islam, and Mohammed, as well as the Crusades, and
tosome extent Christianity (Paez et al., 2013 unpublished data).
Being linked to conservative values (Inglehart et al., 2004), such representations
of history may serve to legitimize a pro-war attitude reflected in the idea of a “Holy
War” or a “Just War”. Belief in a “Holy War” implies that the God of a religion is
believed to command followers to wage war on those unfaithful and who pose a threat
to the believers. Many wars have been characterised as holy wars, and usually religious
imagery is recruited to justify the nationalistic cause. Christianity, for example,
accommodated to militarism in the 4th century when the Emperor Constantine was
converted and when Saint Augustine provided a moral justification for Christian
participation in war with the concept of Just War (Walzer, 2004). Japanese Buddhists,
in turn, justified the “Holy War” against the West and in Sri Lanka Buddhist monks
supported the civil war against Tamils (Nelson, 2003), although Buddhism’s
commitment to non-violence and compassion implies that it should commit its followers
to opposition to war. Belief in a “Just War”, in turn, means legitimizing some wars as
right because they are perceived to avenge injury or to maintain earthly justice. For
instance, during the World War I (WWI) each side used Christian imagery to make war
appear as just and necessary (e.g. the slogan “in God we trust” was used by both sides).
In overall, religious wars are more common than secular, more brutal, and more likely
to recur (Toft, 2007).
History as an “Eternal Retour” or a Cycle of the Rise and Fall of Civilizations
Other older relevant conceptions of history point out the cyclical or “rise and
fall” nature of history. Most ancient cultures held a conception of history that was not
linear but circular, not referring to a full circle, but believing that history was cyclical
with a pattern of rise and fall (Breisach, 2006). For instance, the ancient history of
China was summarized in itsdynastic historiography as the continuous succession of the
following four stages: “arrival of a new dynasty”, “dynasty at its height”, “decline of the
dynasty”, “China in chaos” and begin again (Iggers et al., 2008). History and time are
proposed to be circular in Eastern cultures and not lineal like in the West (Needham,
1966). Thus, the cyclical view of history could be related to Asian collectivism. In
fact, Gilgen & Cho (1979, in their Braitwhite & Scott, 1991) elaboration of Eastern
versus Western values scale, posit that the statement “The world keeps passing trough
cycles, over and over again” characterizes more Eastern values and data confirm that
Koreans and Buddhism followers endorse these values more strongly than Northern
Americans. Confirming the anchorage of cyclical and rise-and-fall view of history in
Eastern Confucianism and Buddhism, as well as in Islamic tradition, a cyclical view and
perception of history as rise and fall of civilizations correlate positively with evaluation
of Confucius and Confucianism, as well as Buddha and Buddhism. The agreement with
a cyclical view of history is also associated with positive perception of Mohammed and
Islam (Paez et al., 2013 unpublished data).
In turn, Western linear views of history derives from Greek and Roman periods,
and is based on Christian heritage (Breisach, 2006). Westerners believe that events
unfold in a relative linear fashion, with stable forces producing a predictable future (Ji,
Nisbett, & Su, 2001). However, cyclical beliefs about history are not absent inWestern
Culture (Iggers et al., 2008). In addition to Greek and Roman sources, the cyclical view
of history could be related to Vico’s conception of the “spiral of history” (1744/1973) or
to Marx’s assertion that history always repeated twice, once as tragedy and the second
time as comedy (Fontana, 2000). These cyclical views also appear in Western culture
around WWI, developed mainly by Toynbee in his work titled “A Study of History” on
the rise and decline of civilizations (Fontana, 2000). Moreover, the “rise and fall” view
of history appears associated to authoritarian and militaristic beliefs in Spengler’s work.
Writing in reaction to the carnage of the WWI, he believed that Western society driven
by money and corruptible democracy was entering into a phase of decadence and
Caesarism. This Spenglerian worldview was an additional incentive to the rise of Hitler
because Spengler supported the emergence of a strong-willed leader type of government
as the next phase after the democracy fails (Hobsbawm, 1995).
“Great Men Theory”
Other relevant older historiosophy refers to history focused on kingdoms and the
state elite dominance - powers formerly attributed to the gods become transferred to
figures at the head of the state (Bujarin, 1925/1974). Greek thinker Plutarch asserts that
the very character of men changes history (Fontana, 2000). This is the “Great Men
theory” or the belief that unusually influential individuals determine the main direction
of history (Moscovici, 1985; Hanke et al., in press). History in ancient, medieval, and
modern times focused on kingdoms and dynasties in the entire world (Iggers et al.,
2008). Such an idea is associated most often with 19th-century historian Carlyle, who
commented that "the history of the world is but the biography of great men"
(Hobsbawm, 1997). Great leaders and heroes play a central role in 19th and 20th
century nationalistic narratives in Asia, Europe, and America (Dager, 2009; Iggers et
al., 2008), and we can hypothesize that this view of history is also widespread. Even if
20th century historians reject this theory of history, mass media usually emphasize the
central role of important personalities in social life and transmit an implicit version of
this theory in lay people’s beliefs (Moscovici, 1985). Confirming the prevalence of
these beliefs 33% of respondents in 85 nations agreed that a strong leader is a good way
of governing (Inglehart et al., 2004). Probably, traditional and high power distance or
authoritarian cultures are those that share beliefs about history as a product of great
strong leaders (Hofstede, 2001).
However, it is also possible that individualistic values, emphasizing the role of
subject will power, could support these beliefs of history (Inglehart et al., 2004). Thus,
the “great men theory” based view of history, related to hierarchical values and the
emphasis on obedience, can support a “culture of war” (Bobowik et al., 2010;
Moscovici, 1985; Hofstede, 2001). That is, the belief in “great men”, such as the one
personified in Japanese Emperor (a divine leader), or a glorification of figures such as
Fuhrer or Stalin (Dower, 1999) could justify collective violence. However, the
perception of leaders as important in history (“great men” view) is unrelated to
evaluation of leaders like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Che, Bin Laden, and Bush, but positively
related to evaluation of Mandela, Mother Theresa, Mohammed, Martin Luther, John
Paul II, or Christ (Paez et al., 2013 unpublished data). Such results disconfirm that the
“great men” view is related to endorsement of strong leaders who emphasize violence
but rather to charismatic non-violent leaders and icons of religions. The romantic “great
men theory” is similarly endorsed as the modern (anchored in the idea of progress) and
the post modern view of history (anchored in the idea of technological and scientific
development) (see below), suggesting that the romantic view of history is still important
but coexists with a socio-economic progressive and technological vision. A partial
hegemony of a romantic view of history probably reflects the influence of classical
historical narratives, as well as the influence of mass media that emphasize a narrative
personalized view of news (Iyengar, 1991, 2005; Moscovici, 1985).
Modern representations of history
The modern system, oriented towards the future, proposes that the history is
fuelled by progress (Delacroix et al., 2010).
Linear Progress and Lawful Process in Representations of History
A general trend in historiography around the world during 17th century and
Enlightenment was the rejection of supernatural intervention in nature. History scholars
focused on causal and social explanations, emphasizing a secular and directional view
of time and history. In the opposition to cyclical views, numerous thinkers (e.g. Kant)
supported the idea that humanity is moving towards better future and continuously
advancing. This linear sense of time is apparent in the 18th century philosophes' idea of
human progress, 19th century concepts of social evolution, and in the contemporary
ideas of developed and developing nations (Needham, 1966). The so called Whig
interpretation of history conceived human history as progress from savagery and
ignorance toward peace, freedom, and prosperity (see Liu & Robinson, in press).
“Whiggish” histories continue to influence popular understandings of political and
social development. Dramatic narratives that detail epic struggles for enlightened ideals
are apparent in cinematography, television, political rhetoric, and even history
textbooks. ). In the same vein, the view of history as a regular or lawful phenomenon
was a main idea of Comte’s positivism (Fontana, 2000; Hobsbawm, 1997). Marx’s
conception of history also raised attention to the importance of socio-economics in the
unfolding of history (Fontana, 2000). Marxism proposes that social progress is driven
by progress in the productive forces (technology, labour, etc.) a society has at its
disposal and also enforces a lawful, economically determined conception of history
(Anderson, 1998). In other words, history can be perceived in lay beliefs through a
lawful economic determinism as understood by social evolutionism, positivism, and
Marxism – official ideology of a lot of nations for a long time (Judt, 2005).
Surveys have provided evidence that the view of history as narrating progress is
dominant across nations (Páez et al., 2013). This is congruent with history textbooks,
that the Americas, Ireland, New Zealand, France and another nations usually narrate a
secular teleological master narrative, including different versions of victimization and
heroism, courage, duty, and sacrifice, that instill a view of the progress of the nation
from oppression towards freedom, creation, conquest or reconquest of national territory,
and continual socioeconomic progress (Barton, 2012; Foster, 2012; Tutiaux-Guillon,
2012; Wertsch, 2002). Recent empirical evidence from Liu and Robinson (in press)
analyzing 160 some years of Speeches from the Throne (policy agendas from the
governor or ruling party from 1854 to the present) found that enlightenment era ideas of
the perfectability of peoples was a consistently invoked to provide justification of
governing New Zealand (and especially its ethnic minorities) from colonial to
contemporary times.
Moreover, some evidence suggest that endorsing a view of history emphasizing
socio-economic progress associates with a less negative attitude towards war (Bobowik
et al., 2010). Also, Liu et al. (2009) found that non-Western societies evaluated
progressive events more positively than Western societies did and these evaluations
predicted an increased willingness to fight for one’s country. Under conditions of
modernization, societies centred on survival and hierarchical values tend to ascribe more
relevance to progress, sharing a particularly competitive view of inter-group relations, and
could strengthen a positive attitude towards history and national wars (Cohrs et al., 2005;
Sidanius & Pratto, 2001).
Romantic views: idiographic representations and the role of violence in history
At the opposite of the socio-economic and lawful view of history, 19th-century
academic historians adopted a hermeneutical approach based on German idealistic
philosophy, which rejected the principle of causality in history, denied that laws ruled
the history, and concentrated on idiographic descriptions of political and war events and
“great men” (Fuchs, 2002). Ranke perceived states as “thoughts of good” and wars as
main agents for change and argued that only in war a nation became a nation and
without war there would be no state (Iggers et al., 2008). Social Darwinism appears in
19th century in parallel to Marxism and social evolutionism. Spencer and others used
Darwin’s biological ideas to support their argument that a struggle among races of
people and differing nations led the strongest and most able nations to rule the world.
For Ratzel and other German thinkers, war - with the express purpose of achieving
“vital space” or Lebensraum - was a distinct "biological necessity". Force appears as a
main factor in history and an ineluctable result of nations’ struggle for scarce resources.
German historians in interwar period conceived history as the struggle between races for
supremacy – supporting German expansionism at the cost of “inferior” races (Iggers et
al., 2008).
 The idea of history as a result of violence, social conflict and revolution were
central features of Marxism - for instance Marx and Engel’s statement that “force is the
midwife of history” (Marx & Engels, 1974; Wette, 2006). After WWI Sorel rejected
confidence in progress and reformism and stressed the role of revolutionary violence of
masses. Sorel was invoked by Marxists (like Lenin and Mariategui) and fascists
(Mussolini) showing the widely mefiance on pacific reformism (Iggers et al., 2008).
Lenin introduced a voluntarist element into Marxism and assigned a central role to
organized minorities. Both Maoist and Guevarist versions of Marxism in the 20th
century emphasized the role of vanguards (party and guerrilla) and shared with Third
World liberation ideologues (like Fanon in The Wretched of Earth) a call for revolution
which could be carried by violence (Anderson, 1998). In other words, according to this
viewpoint, war and violence is in many cases an indispensable tool for social change.
Agreement with revolution as a way of social change characterizes a substantial
minority – 12% in 85 nations (Inglehart et al., 2004). Moreover, previous studies on
recall of important historical events show that revolutions and war-related events were
more salient than other historical events listed as the most influential events in world
history, whereas leaders named were known for their roles in wars and other collective
violence events (Liu et al, 2005; 2009). The hegemony of politics and war in free recall
of important events and leaders suggests that lay people implicitly share this view of
history as a product of violence (Moscovici, 1985). However, in studies based on
closed-ended ratings war and politics related events were not perceived as more
important than socioeconomic trends but at least as equally or even less important than
progress-related events (Techio et al., 2010; Bobowik et al., 2010), and war leaders are
evaluated less positively than civil rights leadrss (Hanke et al., in press). Even if wars
are more vivid in free recall, social-structural factors are recognized as important and
prevail in more reflexive and evaluative thinking about history.
With respect to attitudes towards violence, previous arguments suggest that an
idiographic view together with force as the main factor and “great men theory” could
support a culture of war. However, disconfirming the anchorage of violence as the main
factor of history on Marxism and Darwinism, agreement with history as force was
negatively related to evaluation of Marx and creation and evolution of humankind,
unrelated to evaluation of Lenin, Mao and Guevara, but correlated with positive
evaluation of Confucius and Confucianism, Buddhism, Islam, and Hinduism, suggesting
that agreement with the meaning of history as violence is also anchored on religion. In
the same vein, idiographic and violence-based, views of history are not associated with
pro-war attitude – only the last is associated to one index of willingness of fight (Páez et
al., 2013, unpublished data).
Post-modern Representations of History
Finally, in the post-modern regime the focus is on the present, the future is
opaque, and social movements are weak (Delacroix et al., 2010). This view empahisze
“the end of history” and class struggle, giving relevance to technology on one hand, and
in parallel emerge a “disenchanted” view of history, claiming the end of “big narratives”
oriented towards the future, like liberalism and Marxism.
History as Technological and Scientific Progress and History as Meaningless and
Pessimism
Rooted in Enlightenment and paradoxically Marxism, the technological-
scientific perspective proposes a general modernization trend in history. After WWII,
technological modernization was proposed to be a tool that could be used to develop all
nations. Even prior to this, economically liberal theorists like Adam Smith and Jeremy
Bentham strongly influenced colonial ideologies throughout the British Empire, and
including as a justification for the colonization of New Zealand (Liu & Robinson, in
press). Theoricians such as Rostow in his work The Stages of Economic Growth and
other economic historians emphasize the idea of scientific modernization and
technological development as a main factor of history. Scientific and technological
development, secularization, industrialization, urbanization, economical growth,
capitalism, and democracy are processes that represent an idea of linear process
modelled from the West. Modernization is therefore simultaneous to westernization.
Confirming the prevalence of these beliefs, 54% of respondents from 85 nations
in the WVS agreed that scientific advances help mankind (Inglehart et al, 2004).
Secularized beliefs, openness to innovation and change, future orientation, and scientific
thinking appear as central features associated to modernization among Chinese and
opposed to traditional culture (Yang, 1996; Smith, Bond & Kagitcibasi, 2006). This
suggests that materialistic and traditional cultures disagree with the meaning of history
as scientific progress. However, Iggers et al. (2008) asserts that beliefs based on
progress, technology, and linear time are modern and widely shared in all cultures, and
he proposes that these beliefs became dominant in Asia or in the Islamic world. Results
from the WHS indicate that there exists a shared view of history as based on
technological-scientific development (Paez et al, 2013). A cross-regional consensus in
these beliefs suggests that a “social evolutionism” technocratic-scientific view of
history is currently universally dominant. Such results disconfirm the thesis that
technological-scientific progress and a linear view of history are typical of Western
culture (see also Nisbett, 2003). In fact, at the opposite of the West-East values scale
(Braithwite & Scott, 1991), both West and East (and also Africa and Latin America)
agree with the development of science and technology as the main factor of history,
confirming Iggers et al. (2008) assertion about universality of these beliefs.
The dynamics of Social representations of history: dealing with past
negative events and collective emotions by minimization and reconstruction

Collective memories can be conceived of as a set of social representations

concerning the past groups produced and transmitted through the interactions of its
members . They are widely shared beliefs about collective past, based on oral and
informal transmission of information, stories that are “lay history”. "Scientific” or
formal history feeds these images of past like science nourish social representations that
er normative (moral lessons about our martyrs, heroes and positive aspects of past), are
related to groups´ needs, attitudes and defence of social identity representations, in the
sense of the specific image that a group has about its .
Moreover, social representations of past are related to collective emotions, in
particular, conscious or social emotions of proud, guilt and shame (like the Holocaust
and the collective guilt of Germans). Groups tend to feel historical proud, although they
should deal with negative past behaviours and threats to positive social identity.
Negative past experience usually elicits both shame and guilt: for instance, university
students belonging to the third generation after the WW II, report first, feelings of
shame (65%) and second, feelings of guilt (41%) when thinking about the Holocaust
(Rensman, 2004). Guilt is strongly related to reparation and apology and shame is
usually associated with tendencies to escape, hide or distancing motivation – like
avoiding reminders of negative collective event, distancing from the in-group or
punishment and derogation in-group black sheep members (Paez et al, 2006). Usually
people feel collective guilt when they categorise themselves in the group of
perpetrators, , perceive the group as responsible for negative actions that could have
been controlled, actions are perceived as illegitimate and morally unjustifiable, harm
done remains uncorrected and cost and reparative actions are not perceived as costly or
the harm impossible to repair (Branscombe, 2004).Collective guilt is related to
identification with the ingroup at a moderate level. Subjects with lower identification
with the national in-group, feel lower level of pride and collective self-esteem, are less
defensive, more alike to accept confrontation with the negative past and to assume
reparative actions – this profile is more typical of third generation of West Germans in
relation to W.W.II and explains in part, why this generation feels collective guilt
strongly (Rensman, 2004).
As previously stated shared beliefs about the past are products of informal
communication and reproduce processes of anchoring and objectification; social
representations of past are anchored on groups collective knowledge, values and
attitudes and follows processes of selective retention, abstraction and objectification –
conventionalization in the terms of Bartlett (1932; Paez, Marques & Vincze,
2006;Jodelet & Haas, 2014).). Cross-generation oral transmission of informal history is
one of the most important processes related to how cultures and collective memory
emerge, persist and change. When oral statements refer to old times (like William Tell
figure in Switzerland) rumours are alike cultural legends, they are manifestations of
collective memories. Moreover, themes of many rumours are long-lived and reproduce
central values and symbols of culture. Rumours usually reproduce unofficial or
alternative memories, like in the case of the long-lived idea of President Kennedy
murder by a ruling class conspiracy, in spite of Warren Commission official statement
of an individual murder. (Rosnow, 1980). Rumours are not only a manifestation of
collective memory, but allow to understand informal social communication or
communicative memory. Serial reproduction of rumour and information, like in classic
Bartlett or Allport and Postman studies, is a paradigmatic contribution to the study of
social representations of history or collective memory (Marques, Paez, Valencia &
Vincze,2006 ) A review of studies on serial reproduction or experimental retransmission
of informations ,concluded that as information is passed along chains details tend to
lose, descriptions of events and groups tend to become abstracts, information tend to
become stereotyped and conventionalised, following expectations, values and dominant
attitudes (Kashima, 2000) . The transmission of historical events in the context of inter-
group relations were analysed in three studies that analyze the communicative dynamics
involved in social representations. In the first study Portuguese participants were
provided with information about a (fictitious) historical massacre, according to a 2
(Target: In-group : massacre’s perpetrators had been Portuguese mercenaries vs. Out-
group: Spaniards ) x 2 (Source: In-group Portuguese vs. Out-group: spaniard) between-
participants design... Participants listened to the message and then evaluated its
relevance, credibility, and reported positive-negative feelings as well as guilt/shame
triggered by the event. Then were asked to write the message so that it could be
transmitted to other participants. Procedure was repeated twice and three
retransmissions were collected. In all studies, participants assigned more credibility to
information when it arose from an in-group source and when the traumatic collective
event was related to an out-group. Higher guilt and shame were reported when the target
was national in-group. Credibility was associated to shame and guilt when the traumatic
event was related to the in-group. Higher identification with the in-group (particularly
ethnic identity) was related to higher cognitive coping (particularly minimisation) with
collective negative past events. Content analyses of the 102 last written versions, show
that massacres appear in 4% of in-group narratives (targets were Portuguese) and 28%
out-group narratives (targets were Spanish) Rapes were mentioned in 13% of in-group
narratives and in 54% of out-group narratives, Critics to perpetrators appear in 30% of
in-group narratives and 56% of out-group narratives, and 46% mention America’s
Discovery in the in-group narratives and only 26% in the out-group version... In relation
to accuracy, percentage of remembered items were around 20-30% in the last
retransmission position in two studies and forgetting or omission was stronger in the
case of in-group information (Marques et al, 2006)
These studies illustrate how probably social representations helps to cope with
past negative events. In the whole, these findings support the idea that informal
communication is an important channel of social differentiation and through which
group members attenuate the potential damage of negative historical events to their
social identity. Participants assigned less credibility and less relevance, and attempted to
reconstruct a negative historical event more, when it involved the in-group than the out-
group. Omitting unfavourable details, accentuating favourable, to the detriment of
unfavourable details, and reconstructing negative events under a more positive light, has
been observed both in rumour transmission and in recollections of historical events as a
form of defending collective identity and cope with negative past events that arose
negative moral emotions like guilt and shame (cf. Baumesteir & Hastings, 1997;
Marques, Páez & Serra, 1997). Also the members of the perpetrators in-group, question
the credibility of the information about these negative behaviours. Studies show that,,
by means of retransmission of information, subjects feel more guilt and shame, but
lower negative emotions (and this is a form of coping), when hearing, reading and
retelling massacres perpetrated by national members. They believe more in-groups
critics, but at the same time, reconstruct more general information related to in-group.
They attribute lower credibility and relevance to messages related to in-group collective
negative behaviour and display more cognitive coping. At the end of “three
generations”, relevance and negative emotions related to in-group past collective
behaviour decrease, content of narrative reproduces cultural stereotypes, forgetting and
reconstruction are higher,

La dynamique de la mémoire collective : Passé objectivé ou présent ancré dans

le passé ? Le cas des representations sociales du passé colonial en Belgique

Laurent Licata, Université libre de Bruxelles

Commençons par présenter deux exemples tirés, respectivement, de nos

recherches sur les mémoires collectives de la colonisation belge au Congo et sur le
conflit linguistique belge.
Exemple 1 : Lors de nos enquêtes au sujet de la colonisation menées
auprès de personnes congolaises ou d’origine congolaise résidant en
Belgique, le thème des « mains coupées » est régulièrement apparu. Par
exemple, une répondante confiait : « Les Congolais étaient maltraités par
les Belges, on les faisait travailler comme des esclaves en leur coupant
les mains s’ils ne fournissaient pas l’effort demandé par le Blanc »
(Licata & Klein, 2005, p. 265). Lors d’une enquête plus récente, un autre
répondant expliquait : « On te dit ‘Tu dois produire’, c’est un exemple
que je donne, ‘Tu dois produire 5 sacs de coton par jour ou bien par
semaine, tu dois faire 10 sacs de coton et, si tu ne le fais pas, on vient, on
te coupe la main’ » (Oldenhove, 2014, p. 41). On sait que la première
période de la colonisation du Congo par les Belges – de 1885 à 1908 – a
fait l’objet de vives critiques. Dans ce cadre, la pratique des « mains
coupées » a frappé les esprits dès la fin du XIXème siècle, lors des
premières campagnes internationales contre l’Etat Indépendant du Congo
dirigé par le roi Léopold II. La réalité de ces pratiques brutales est
attestée par les historiens (Vangroenweghe, 1986), mais ceux-ci les
circonscrivent à un contexte historique – entre 1893 et 1900 – et
territorial – les zones de production du caoutchouc – précis. Pourtant, ces
atrocités apparaissent souvent lorsque les personnes interrogées décrivent
les relations entre coloniaux belges et colonisés congolais durant la
colonisation, souvent sans limite temporelle ou spatiale, ou en les situant
dans un contexte sans lien réel avec l’Histoire (comme la récolte du
coton).
Exemple 2 : En 2010, le politicien flamand Jan Peumans, membre de la
N-VA (un parti politique séparatiste), a affirmé sa conviction que « Des
Flamands sont morts parce qu’ils ne parlaient pas le français ». Ce récit
mémoriel est bien connu en Belgique : durant la guerre 14-18, des soldats
 flamands, sous les ordres d’officiers francophones, auraient reçu leurs
ordres en français, donnant lieu à des malentendus qui furent fatals à
nombre d’entre eux. Cette image fut véhiculée dans les milieux
nationalistes flamands dès l’entre-deux guerres, tout au long du XXème
siècle, et subsiste aujourd’hui. Pourtant, les historiens belges,
francophones comme néerlandophones, contestent la véracité de ces
récits (Klein et al., 2012). En fait, on n’en trouve nulle trace dans les
archives des années de guerre (documents officiels, presse du front ou
ego-documents – correspondances ou journaux intimes) ; il n’apparaît
qu’après-guerre, dans le cadre d’une radicalisation du Mouvement
flamand.
Dans ces deux exemples, des personnes décrivent un événement passé, bien que leur
version de l’histoire s’écarte, parfois sensiblement, de la « vérité historique » telle
qu’elle est établie (toujours provisoirement, comme dans toute science) par la recherche
historique. Comment comprendre ces discours ?

L’une des questions fondamentales au cœur de la réflexion et de la recherche à

propos de la mémoire collective – ou sociale – est celle de la direction d’influence entre
le passé et le présent: les états mentaux des membres d’un groupe social – leurs affects,
attitudes, représentations ou comportements actuels – sont-ils influencés par la manière
dont ils se représentent leur passé ? Ou, à l’inverse, serait-ce plutôt les états mentaux
actuels des membres du groupe qui influencent leurs représentations de ce passé ?
Prager (2001) distingue ainsi deux approches, qu’il qualifie de néo-freudienne et de
néo-durkheimienne, et que l’on peut rapprocher de la distinction entre « poids du
passé » et « choix du passé » proposée par Lavabre (1991). Dans la première, les
tensions vécues actuellement au sein d’une collectivité sont interprétées comme dérivant
d’intrusions inévitables d’un passé traumatique dans le présent. Au contraire, pour
l’approche néo-Durkheimienne, le passé est interprété comme une ressource symbolique
que les membres d’un groupe peuvent mobiliser afin de réduire une tension présente. La
mémoire collective est alors comprise comme un processus complexe de construction
sociale lié à l’identité actuelle du groupe. Cela implique que différentes versions du
passé puissent être élaborées à différents moments de la vie d’un groupe, ou d’un
groupe social à l’autre.
A quelle dynamique avons-nous affaire dans nos deux exemples ? Les répondants
congolais et le politicien flamand sont-ils, bien malgré eux, aux prises avec « un passé
qui ne passe pas » ou, au contraire, leurs discours sur le passé sont-ils « déformés » par
leurs états psychologiques actuels ? Notre propos ici sera de montrer que la théorie des
représentations sociales peut nous aider à répondre à ces questions.
Cette théorie, on le sait, a depuis ses origines revendiqué l’héritage durkheimien
(Moscovici, 1976). Il serait cependant réducteur de limiter ses apports potentiels à
l’étude des mémoires collectives à l’approche néo-durkheimienne décrite ici. En effet,
comme nous le verrons, à travers les processus d’ancrage et d’objectivation, la théorie
des représentations sociales nous permet de rendre compte aussi bien de la manière dont
« le présent est hanté par le passé » que de celle dont « le passé est modelé, inventé,
réinventé, et reconstruit par le présent » (Assmann, 1997, p. 9).

C’est sans doute par le biais du processus d’ancrage que l’apport de la théorie est
le plus évident, puisqu’il a trait à l’intégration de la nouveauté dans un système de
représentations déjà bien établi. Ainsi, toute situation nouvelle, pour peu qu’elle
paraisse suffisamment importante pour susciter des échanges de points de vue au sein de
la collectivité qui y est confrontée, est appréhendée à l’aune du déjà connu. Comme
l’écrivait Moscovici (1984/2000, p. 54) : « Donc nos représentations rendent le non-
familier familier, ce qui est une autre manière de dire qu’elles dépendent de la
mémoire ». Les représentations anciennes ont donc forcément un effet sur les états
psychologiques des membres du groupe. Dans nos deux exemples, tout comportement
discriminatoire actuel des Belges à l’égard des Congolais résidant en Belgique pourra
ainsi être rapproché, par analogie, des traitements cruels subis par leurs ancêtres, et
toute marque de mépris de la part des Francophones rappellera aux Flamands la manière
dont leurs arrière-grand-pères ont été traités dans les tranchées de l’Yser. Il convient
bien entendu de distinguer la vérité historique et les représentations sociales de
l’histoire. Une telle représentation n’a nul besoin d’être véridique afin de pouvoir servir
de support d’ancrage. Toutefois, même biaisée, elle peut révéler une vérité d’un autre
ordre, nous y reviendrons. En bref, le passé – représenté – peut donc « peser » sur le
présent (Liu & Hilton, 2005).

Le rôle de l’objectivation dans la dynamique des mémoires collectives saute sans

doute moins aux yeux. C’est pourtant, de notre point de vue, à ce niveau que la théorie
des représentations sociales éclaire le mieux ces processus. Les mots « On te coupe la
main » ou « Des Flamands sont morts parce qu’ils ne parlaient pas le français »
évoquent des représentations très concrètes, des images vives. Dans les deux cas,
cependant, ces représentations convient probablement un message beaucoup plus
complexe, que l’on ne peut saisir que si l’on partage avec les locuteurs un répertoire
commun de représentations. En effet, comme l’a proposé Moscovici (1976), les
structures figuratives telles que celles-là doivent être appréhendées comme des
signifiants. En décrivant un événement historique, le sujet exprime des sentiments
présents, ou prend position dans un débat actuel.

Ainsi, lorsque des personnes d’origine congolaise rappellent, aujourd’hui, en

Belgique, l’épisode des mains coupées, ou lorsque des Belges néerlandophones
évoquent le sort des soldats de 14-18, il ne suffit pas de confronter leurs dires aux
travaux des historiens afin de pointer les incohérences – du moins si, en tant que
psychologues sociaux, l’on s’intéresse à ce que ces personnes veulent dire. Le rappel du
traitement cruel réservé aux Congolais voici plus d’un siècle renseigne sur le sentiment
de non reconnaissance partagé par certains des Congolais résidant dans l’ex-métropole.
D’ailleurs, nous avons pu montrer que la tendance de ces répondants à exprimer des
sentiments actuels de non reconnaissance et de discrimination était associée à des
descriptions plus négatives de l’histoire coloniale (Oldenhove, 2014). De même, en
évoquant les rapports entre soldats flamands et officiers francophones, le politicien
nationaliste flamand prend position dans le cadre du conflit communautaire belge. Il
suggère ainsi que cette image est toujours pertinente afin d’interpréter les relations
intergroupes actuelles. Cela lui permet de légitimer son projet politique de prise de
distance à l’égard d’un Etat belge toujours perçu comme étant aux mains des élites
francophones.

Dans les deux cas, une image se substitue à un discours relatif au présent. Ces
discours semblent décrire des événements passés ; en fait, ils dénoncent une situation
actuelle. C’est en cela que, au-delà des inexactitudes historiques, ils sont porteurs d’une
vérité. Les mémoires collectives sont choisies, par analogie et ancrage, en fonction des
motivations présentes des acteurs sociaux. Ces mémoires sont ensuite utilisées afin
d’interpréter les situations actuelles. Drapées de l’illusion de vérité historique que leur
confèrent leurs qualités iconiques, elles légitiment les prises de position présentes. Elles
le font souvent en attirant l’attention sur la continuité de l’exogroupe (Klein et al.,
2012). Ainsi, elles suggèrent que les Belges ont toujours été dominateurs, ou que les
Francophones ont toujours été méprisants, et qu’ils continuent de l’être. Nos recherches
sur le conflit linguistique belge ont cependant montré que la mémoire collective
victimaire tendait à s’estomper au sein des jeunes générations flamandes, et que cette
diminution s’accompagnait d’un affaiblissement des attitudes séparatistes (Rimé,
Bouchat, Klein et Licata, sous presse). De fait, la situation économique et l’autonomie
politique dont jouit leur groupe depuis plusieurs décennies n’ont plus grand-chose à voir
avec la situation de domination économique et de mépris culturel que l’image des
soldats de 14-18 symbolisait. Lorsqu’une représentation du passé cesse d’être
pertinente, elle disparaît.
Il serait cependant injuste de discréditer ces discours en arguant qu’ils ne sont,
somme toute, que le produit d’un travail collectif de réinvention du passé. En effet, si
notre raisonnement est valide, il faut prendre au sérieux le fait que les mémoires
collectives, qui constituent en partie le système représentationnel d’un groupe et servent
donc de support d’ancrage, sont toujours déjà le produit d’un processus d’objectivation
à travers lequel ce groupe a, dans le passé, symbolisé son expérience. Elles nous
renseignent donc, indirectement, sur cette expérience collective. Après tout, les
Congolais ont réellement été dominés par les Belges lors de la colonisation, et les
Flamands ont réellement été méprisés par une partie des élites francophones belges …

CHAPTER’S SUMMARY

This chapter defined and described basic functions of collective memory and
social representations of history and reviewed existing literature and empirical research
on these topics.
SR of history were defined as shared images and knowledge about the past,
elaborated, transmitted, and conserved by a group through interpersonal, mass media,
and institutional communication. Social representation of a historical event emerges
when: 1) the historical event is relevant for social identities; 2) the historical event has
provoked a significant social change or involved a threat to group identity; 3) the
historical event is emotion-laden; 4) the historical event is commemorated through rituals
as well as institutional and informal communication; and 5) the commemoration of the
historical event serves current needs and goals.
These representations serve to preserve a sense of ingroup continuity and to
cultivate values and norms that prescribe behavior within the group. Specifically, they
serve to 1) define the group, 2) define group values and norms, 3) enhance group
cohesion, 4) sets the group’s value, 5) legitimize group behavior, 6) mobilize the group,
and 7) influence present psychological states of group members. As a particularly
important example, SR of intergroup conflict: 1) explain and justify the outbreak of the
conflict and the course of its development, 2) present the ingroup in a positive light; 3)
describe the outgroup in delegitimizing ways; and 4) portray aggression against enemies
as a manner to repay injuries suffered by the nation.Relevant in the emergence of SR are
processes such as anchoring and objectification. Through these processes, SR of history
assimilate more elaborated, frequently scientific or philosophical discourses, as well as
historiographical and national narratives transmitted by history textbooks and teachers.
Also, in this chapter we reviewed existing trends or biases reflected in social
representations of history. For instance, existing research confirms the hegemony of a
Eurocentric and / or Western-centric view of history. It is necessary to be aware that the
“dominant ideology tends to be the ideology of ruling groups” and to correct the
importance that we spontaneously attribute to “central cultural actors”. Wars and
political and military leaders are conceived as particularly historically salient because
vivid negative information is especially salient in perception and because mass media
and to some extent history textbooks stress such narratives. Also, the events and leaders
worshiped and idealized in official commemorations (e.g. Columbus and Discovery) and
included in narratives related to the foundation of the current nation state are those
considered as having historical significance. In a similar way, events experienced during
adolescence or early adulthood as well as two-three generations old events have particular
historical significance for persons because of the importance of direct experience and
oral communication for the maintenance of events vividly in memory. Also, according
to research people tend to view recent events as more historically significant than those
which occurred long ago and therefore share a short-term view of history. Finally,
events that fit with general norms and meaning structures prevalent in the society and
culture are often assigned high historical significance.
Furthermore, existing data proceeding from World History Survey indicates the
existence of a common sense historiography. Research has shown that, for instance, the
idea of progress and decline may coexist in the same way the lineal view of history may
be reconciled with a belief in a circular nature of time. At odds with the idea that views
of history as a cycle or rise and fall are more common in Eastern cultures, agreement
with this idea appears both among university students from both Eastern and Western
cultures. Research also shows that people share at the same time a causal or
technological view of history, a view of history as fueled by economic development,
and an individualistic view of history in which great leaders are an important causal
force. In any case, even scholarship historians and sophisticated thinkers try to reconcile
these approaches. The view of great leaders as an important cause of history is not
currently related to the approval of violence and authoritarian leaders. In fact, in a recent
global survey of university students’ views of history, war leaders were rated
significantly lower than humanitarian leaders and scientists (Hanke et al., in press).
Existing evidence also suggests that people agree with the development of science and
technology as the main causal factor of history, confirming that beliefs on technology
and linear time are modern and widely shared in all current cultures.
All these features characterize how lay people perceive history and show the
fecundity of SR approach to the domain of collective memory, in particular conceived
of as the memory of groups – and not only as cultural or institutional memory.
Importantly, there is a need for further in-depth research on SR of history because they
were shown to shape the relations between different national, religious, or ethnic
groups.
The analysis of the dynamics of social representations of history about negative
past national events and show how groups are able to cope with . It was showed that by
means of retransmission of information, subjects feel more guilt and shame, but lower
negative emotions (and this is a form of coping), when hearing, reading and retelling
massacres perpetrated by national members. They believe more in-groups critics, but at
the same time, reconstruct more general information related to in-group. They attribute
lower credibility and relevance to messages related to in-group collective negative
behaviour and display more cognitive coping. At the end of “three generations”,
relevance and negative emotions related to in-group past collective behaviour decrease,
content of narrative reproduces cultural stereotypes, forgetting and reconstruction are
higher, and, in general, subjects are concerned, but do not commit, display a repertoire
of coping like nodentification with perpetrators, relative justification in a context of
their behaviours and minimisation of frequency.
Finally, we illustrate these dynamic of reconstruction of the past by means of a
synthesis of studies about the reconstruction of the colonial historical past in Belgium.
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