Institutional memory,institutional capacity: narratives of failed biomedical encounters in East Africa

Abstract

This paper focuses on a series of failed medical encounters that took place in East Africa in the 1950s and after, and explores how the organizations involved ? the Kenyan Division of Insect Borne Diseases, the East African Medical Survey, and the Tanzanian National Institute of Medical Research ? chose to document and remember these events. The examples focus on medical encounters characterized by disagreements and miscommunications that stymied productive work. In each case, failures were remembered in very stylized and restructured ways that stressed the validity of the science and the valor of the scientists while drawing on tropes of African communities as irrational and superstitious. Capacity is built and maintained by having a functional institutional memory, which includes recounting failure and an ability to integrate knowledge from failure, leading to new approaches. It is found that remembering failures in such stylized forms systematically diminished the functionality of their institutional memory.     

Recuperative memory in Romanian post-Communist society

This paper explores the idea of “recuperative memory” with respect to the process of coming to terms with the past after the fall of the Romanian Communist regime in 1989. Its method is to examine the mechanisms used by recuperative memory in order to re-appropriate the past and emphasize the inherently mediated and multifaceted nature of this process. Using various examples from oral testimonies, autobiographical writings, literary works, and cinema, the paper argues that the role of recuperative memory is not only to facilitate the process of coming to terms with the past, but also to offer the material necessary to sustain a viable politics of memory. This entails providing a platform for the intergenerational transmission of memory and knowledge for those who did not live under the Communist regime, filling in this way the intergenerational gap, despite the lack of political class engagement.     

Memory and ethnic leadership among Afro-descendants and Africans in Argentina

Several academic studies on African and Afro-descendant population in Argentina have made reference to the ‘oblivion’ of the black component in the creation of an ethnically white and homogeneous national collective. The present work intends to rethink this issue in light of an Anthropology of the memory that promotes a critical analysis of the construction of an African past as diacritic of ethnic identification and interaction strategy related to the largest society, paying special attention to the actions of ethnic leaderships in the Afro community. In other words, we consider the processes of creation and validation of a social memory from an African origin by the ethnic entrepreneurs. For that purpose, we conduct a qualitative study employing the techniques characteristic of anthropological ethnography.     

The call of the wise baby in Chaplin's The kid

In this study we seek to understand the gendered dynamics of bearing witness, remembering, and mourning in contemporary Israeli society by examining the performative practices of one protest movement, Women in Black (WiB). Our focus is on the Haifa chapter of the movement, whose vigils we observed over a seven-year period. After a brief overview of the literature regarding national remembering and commemoration in Israel, the formation of WiB and its place in Israeli political life and discourse, we move to our analysis of the vigil. We argue that by analyzing WiB's vigil as a performance, we are able to complicate the discussion concerning women, performance and remembrance in general and in Israel in particular. We find that through their performance WiB disrupts the current “economy of memory” in Israel; by remembering and performing that which many would like to remain forgotten – the occupation which followed the 1967 War and its consequences – it engages in a project of “transformative remembering,” which disturbs its audience's equanimity and forces it to review its past.     

Responsibility and National Memory: Israel and the Palestinian Refugee Problem

How are Israelis to incorporate the Palestinian refugee problem in their national memory? Scholarly historical accounts of the 1948 period can play an important role in this regard. Benny Morris's account allows them to take responsibility while maintaining the integrity of their national identity. Shabtai Teveth's account allows them to avoid responsibility, but at the cost of ignoring mountains of evidence. Nur Masalha's account in contrast, burdens them with a responsibility that jeopardizes their national bond. It is reasonable to expect them to adopt the first and reject the second, but it is unreasonable to expect them to adopt the third, irrespective of its scholarly merits.     

加工速度和工作记忆在认知毕生发展过程中的作用

研究加工速度和工作记忆在认知毕生发展过程中的作用.10-90岁的健康被试1993名,完成加工速度、工作记忆和四项认知能力测验,应用多层次回归分析方法考查加工速度和工作记忆对认知加工的"与年龄相关"和"与年龄无关"的两部分作用,并且,对于"与年龄相关"的部分,比较在认知发展与老化过程中加工速度和工作记忆对各项认知变量的作用量.结果表明:1)在"与年龄相关"的部分,加工速度和工作记忆对认知发展的作用小于对认知老化的作用;2)在认知发展和老化过程,加工速度的作用大于工作记忆的作用;3)加工速度和工作记忆对认知加工的"与年龄无关"的作用部分是不可忽略的.     

Recounting Graphic Sexual Abuse Memories in Therapy: The Impact on Women's Healing

This retrospective study investigates the impact on women's functioning of recounting during their therapy the graphic details of sexual abuse they had experienced in childhood. Fifty-nine participants residing in Southern Ontario were divided into two groups: those who spent more time (N=19) versus less time (N=40) in therapy recounting graphic abuse details. Results revealed that the group who had spent more time recounting abuse memories: (a) had mean functioning scores that were significantly lower before and during therapy, but that did not significantly differ after therapy; (b) recovered more memories of abuse during therapy, and (c) were more likely to have participated in hypnosis, and to report having been encouraged to remember details of abuse. Participants rated as most therapeutic those approaches that assisted them to increase their understanding of the abuse. Strategies related to acceptance, understanding, and making meaning were most important in promoting healing.     

No solid ground: Max Aub’s roots and routes

While Max Aub’s unique and prolific body of work has been the subject of numerous studies and monographs, his work remains undervalued in transnational contexts. An analysis of two of his plays, San Juan (1943) and El rapto de Europa (1946), and a collection of poems, Diario de Djelfa (1944), makes it possible to rethink the ways in which aesthetic projects, produced either during World War II or shortly afterwards, reveal a geography of the war’s forced displacements, in which the Spanish Civil War, European colonialism in North Africa, and its enduring postcolonial remainders become the most important landmarks. While the present analysis centers on Aub’s routes between Spain, France, Algeria, and, finally, Mexico, a persistent yearning for roots, for a sense of belonging, or, to use one of his characters’ words, for “solid ground” haunts his writing. The interplay between roots and routes therefore makes it possible to consider Aub’s work in a postcolonial context and within a transnational memory.     

The rebirth of Chinggis Khaan: state appropriation of Chinggis Khaan in post-socialist Mongolia

A massive monument of Chinggis Khaan (Chinggis Khaan’s name is spelt differently depending on the language in which it was written and on conventions of transliteration. Among the most common are Chinggis, Genghis, Genghiz, or Jengiz. For the purpose of the paper, the Mongolian transliteration is used.) imposingly gazes down from the government palace in Ulaanbaatar, the capital city of Mongolia. The monument was erected in 2006 in commemoration of the 800-year anniversary of the establishment of “the Great Mongolian State.” Occupying arguably the most prominent national space, the monument serves as an arresting emblem of the state. With its silent yet triumphant symbolization, the monument articulates the state’s new ideology in the post-Soviet era. The monument is one of countless symbolic and material grand-scale state expressions appropriating Chinggis Khaan. In this article, I examine the state’s appropriation of Chinggis Khaan as the marker of Mongolian post-socialist national identity. In doing so, I critically examine how the state appropriates history, remembering and forgetting certain parts, to cultivate a shared sense of belonging and pride. Unifying the public in shared glorification and celebration of Chinggis Khaan ultimately serves to instill devotion to the national political and ideological project.     

Debating Baltic memory regimes

This is a debate article about a volume by Michael Bernhard and Jan Kubik, who put forth a novel analytical framework for comparing memory regimes in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe. The article briefly outlines the model, debates the results of the Baltic chapter in the volume, offers a more rigorous comparative application of the original framework to these cases, and finally provides a methodological critique with regard to the comparative study of memory politics more broadly.