These papers advance sociological discourse beyond the classical “collective memory” model, into critical terrain of overlapping and contested relationships between personal, private, public, or commodity memory Since memory ranges from a personal memory, to a history book, to a monument, to the memory inside a personal computer, or inside a person’s body, to the photos stored in cell phones (at home, on the streets, in war and elsewhere), to massive data-mining operations by corporations, to government-funded DNA banks, or to continuous satellite surveillance photos, sociological questions arise regarding who “owns” what kind of memory, and for what social or private purposes? These papers present simultaneously forward–thinking, backward–reflecting, and historically contextualized, theoretical, conceptual and applied models with which to study the sociological ramifications of a society increasingly dependent on automated and banked electronic and biological memory for economic, legal, governmental, law–enforcement, agribusiness and medical purposes, as well as for the social “re”construction of society, the preservation of historical and tourist sites, knowledge production and ultimately, human re–production.The models and theoretical work presented in these papers revisit and expand upon work of “cannon” sociologists: Durkheim, Halbwachs, Marx, Addams, Mead and Weber. Revisiting classical sociologists’ work regarding collective memory, personal memory and narrative, provides a way to compare and contrast how sociologists have approached the study of memory. Provocative insights into theoretical, methodological and political differences between early American and European sociological approaches to the study of memory are considered. Contemporary theoretical work by Foucault, Bourdieu, Berger, Lowenthal, Anderson, Misztal, Nora, Olick, Zerbavel, Alexander, Lifton, Prager, Ricoeur, Schudson, Schwartz, Zerubavel, Elias, Luhmann, Deegan, Habermas and others, are incorporated into and evoked, in these research papers.
