Between History and Histories: The Making of Silences and Commemorations. Anthropological Horizons, Volume 11.

by Gerald Sider, Gavin A. Smith (Editor)

Since the 1980s historians have been influenced by two anthropological concepts: cultural distance and awareness of small-scale interactions. Recent work, however, has shifted away from these notions. We now see that cultures cannot be studied as units with internal coherence and that the microcosm does not represent a cultural whole. This book proposes an alternative. Differentiation is the keyword that lets us focus on ruptures, contradiction, and change within a society. It drives us to recognize many different histories both along with and opposed to history. The case studies in Between History and Histories use this new approach in historical anthropology to examine how certain events are silenced in the shadow of others that are commemorated by monuments, ceremonies, documents, and storytelling. The first set of studies explores cases around the world where the official construction of the past has been contested. The second set describes the silences that emerge in the midst of such disputes. For students, this collection provides a useful overview of interaction between two disciplines. For historians and anthropologists, it offers an alternative vision of the production of history.

314 pages, ebook

First published December 27, 1997

Reviews

[Rick · Rating 3 out of 5]

When a society glorifies a certain event, other facets of the affair are often silenced. For example, in 1993 Helmut Kohl of the German Federal government dedicated a memorial to the reunited Germany’s war dead. With Germany assuming the posture of victim, the mass graves it created throughout Europe were marginalized. This book offers many examples of this commemoration/silencing dichotomy.