NGO Interventions in the Post-conflict Memoryscape. The Effect of Competing ‘Mnemonic Role Attributions’ on Reconciliation in Cambodia

ABSTRACT

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are a constituent part of post-conflict Transitional Justice interventions and as such their projects shape but are also constrained by various narratives about the past. This article introduces the concept of mnemonic role attributions defined as the sum of how actors, their roles, their responsibility and their suffering are categorised as they are remembered regarding a certain period of time. The article analyses how different mnemonic role attributions that are propagated during interventions by Transitional Justice experts in civil society influence the potential for reconciliation in post-conflict Cambodia.     

‘High Resolution’ Indicators in Peacebuilding: The Utility of Political Memory

This article explores the use of political memory in examining, and providing indicators for, everyday processes of peacebuilding in divided societies, using Northern Ireland as a brief case study. Adopting a position critical of many formal peacebuilding indicators, the article argues for the utility of informal, ‘high resolution’ indicators that can be supplied by examining localized and everyday forms of post-conflict memory. In so doing, the article views the ‘dealing with the past’ and reconciliatory paradigm of social memory in identity driven conflicts as being inadequate for this purpose, and instead posits a more nuanced form of examining memory as a political arena. A case study of political memory in east Belfast is introduced to illustrate both the need for nuance in highlighting localized activity, and need to better reflect a complex and ambiguous peacebuilding environment. Suggestions for methodological approaches geared to capturing processes of everyday political memory, and how these processes can inform praxis, concludes the study.     

Agile small state agency: heuristic plays and flexible national identity markers in Finnish foreign policy

Studies of small state foreign policy tend to draw relatively bleak conclusions when it comes to small state agency. However, I will examine alternative and more positive modalities of small state agency. One such modality is agility, the strategic maneuverability to take advantage of a chancy environment. Besides leading to dangerous rigidities and biases, particular types of foreign policy imageries and heuristics may also facilitate experimental and agile agency. In studying this possibility, Finland is chosen as an illustrative case because historically Finland has faced a particularly constraining geopolitical context and because it has managed to adapt to multiple upheavals and to different geopolitical contexts. The emphasis is on the heuristic dynamics inherent in Finnish foreign policy culture that have allowed it to actively meet the emerging challenges. Instead of taking a detailed historical approach, I seek to understand the role of the relatively flexible and combinable embodied cultural models, i.e. thick images. They allow for agency-related experimentation that may bring added value that allows Finland to exceed the constraints of the brute geopolitical position. After reviewing multiple embodied foreign policy images, I will use them to analyse New Year's speeches by the Finnish Presidents Ahtisaari and Halonen in order to see how the fickle present is made to resonate innovatively with the known, commonplace, and mythical.     

Fezzes in the river: identity politics and European diplomacy in the Middle East on the eve of World War II

This article analyzes how the Poles and Jews who disappeared from the western Ukrainian city of L'viv as a result of the Second World War are remembered in the city today. It examines a range of commemorative practices, from monuments and museums to themed cafes and literature, and analyzes how these practices interact to produce competing mnemonic narratives. In this respect, the article argues for an understanding of the city as a complex text consisting of a diverse range of mutually interdependent mnemonic media produced by a range of actors. The article focuses in particular on the ways in which Ukrainian nationalist narratives interact with the memory of the city's “lost others.” The article also seeks to understand L'viv's memory culture through comparison with a range of Polish cities that have faced similar problems with commemorating vanished communities, but have witnessed a deeper recognition of these communities than has been the case in L'viv. The article proposes reasons for the divergences between the memory cultures of L'viv and that found in Polish cities, and attempts to outline the gradual processes by which L'viv's Polish and Jewish pasts might become more widely integrated into the city's memory culture.     

RECALLING BITTERNESS: HISTORIOGRAPHY,MEMORY, AND MYTH IN MAOIST CHINA

Abstract

For Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party, the socialist transformation after 1949 was not only a political and administrative construction, but also a process of transforming the consciousness of the people and rewriting history. To fight lukewarm attitudes and “backward thoughts” among the peasants, as well as their resistance to rural socialist transformation and collectivization of production and their private lives, Mao decided that politicizing the memory of the laboring class and reenacting class struggle would play a significant role in ideological indoctrination and perpetuating revolution. Beginning in the 1950s, the Party made use of grassroots historical writing, oral articulation, and exhibition to tease out the experiences and memories of individuals, families, and communities, with the purpose of legitimizing the rule of the CCP. The cultural movement of recalling the past combined grassroots histories, semi-fictional family sagas, and public oral presentations, as well as political rituals such as eating “recalling-bitterness meals” to educate the masses, particularly the young. Eventually, Mao’s emphasis on class struggle became the sole guiding principle of historical writings, which were largely fictionalized, and recalling bitterness and contrasting the past with the present became a solid part of PRC political culture, shaping the people’s political imagination of the old society and their way of narrating personal experience. This article also demonstrates people’s suspicion of and resistance to the state’s manipulation of memory and ritualization of historical education, as well as the ongoing contestation between forgetting, remembering, and representation in China today.     

Digging up Spain's past: consequences of truth and reconciliation

Over the last decade the issue of transitional justice has attracted considerable media and academic attention. Diverse countries including such high profile cases as Chile, South Africa and the former East Germany have attempted to grapple with the complex question of how to respond to human rights abuses committed under a previous regime. Transitional justice generally surfaces as an issue during democratic transition. It is less common for this issue of past human rights abuses to be raised when democratic transition has been completed and democracy is fully consolidated. The subject of this article, however, is Spain, where the human rights abuses committed during the 1936–39 civil war, and the long Francoist dictatorship that followed, have only recently come to the fore, a full quarter of a century after the transition to democracy. The article argues that the current struggle to recover the bodies of the disappeared, and their historical memory, represents a significant case which not only provides new insights into the particular democratization process in Spain but also provides more general lessons for other countries grappling with similar problems.     

In The Thick of It: ‘high politics’ and the Holocaust in millennial Britain

ABSTRACT

Over the past twenty years, state-sponsored activities related to the Holocaust have been numerous in Britain. Beginning with the creation of Holocaust Memorial Day at the turn of the millennium, successive governments have followed a policy trajectory that has brought forth a slew of new initiatives and projects related to the Holocaust and its memory. Most recently, this has included the creation of a new national memorial and learning centre, to be housed adjacent to the Palace of Westminster. With cross-party support and the pledge of £50 million of public funds, this lieu de memoire is due to open in January 2020. Conceiving of these activities as exercises in ‘high’ Holocaust politics, Pearce’s article examines the various memory-projects of recent decades and argues they reveal much about millennial Britain and its Holocaust culture. He contends that the nature of these and other initiatives means high Holocaust politics must be subject to continued scrutiny and interrogation.     

图片再认ERP在重型颅脑损伤后记忆障碍鉴定的应用

目的探讨图片再认事件相关电位（ERP）对重型颅脑损伤（sTBI）后记忆障碍法医学鉴定的应用价值。方法采用韦氏记忆量表（WMS—RC）和Neuroscan ERP仪,对74例健康志愿者（对照组）及需评定精神伤残等级的29例重型颅脑损伤后记忆障碍者（sTBI组）进行记忆能力和图片再认ERP检测。结果sTBI组WMS-RC各分测验量表分及记忆商数（MQ）均值均明显低于对照组（P〈0．01）;完成ERP任务的反应时、正确率明显延长和降低（P〈0．01）。对照组在靶与非靶刺激呈现后170ms和500ms左右均可记录到潜伏期无显著性差异的二个正向波（P170和P500）,但靶刺激诱发的P500波幅明显高于非靶刺激（P〈0．01）;sTBI组可记录到相似的ERP波形,但各成分的波幅、潜伏期均明显降低和延长（P〈0．01）。sTBI组P500潜伏期与WMS—RC的记图、再认、再生分测验量表分和MQ值均呈高度负相关（r=-0．73～-0．83,P〈0．01）,而与伤残等级呈明显正相关（r=0．65,P〈0．01）。结论图片再认诱发的Psoo潜伏期与WMS-RC反映的短时记忆功能及鉴定的精神伤残等级明显相关,可为sTBI后记忆障碍的伤残鉴定提供一项较客观的神经电生理依据。     

How Can We Help Witnesses to Remember More? It’s an (Eyes) Open and Shut Case

Five experiments tested the idea that instructing a witness to close their eyes during retrieval might increase retrieval success. In Experiment 1 participants watched a video, before a cued-recall test for which they were either instructed to close their eyes, or received no-instructions. Eye-closure led to an increase in correct cued-recall, with no increase in incorrect responses. Experiments 2-5 sought to test the generality of this effect over variations in study material (video or live interaction), test format (cued- or free-recall) and information modality (visual or auditory details recalled). Overall, eye-closure increased recall of both visual detail and auditory details, with no accompanying increase in recall of false details. Collectively, these data convincingly demonstrate the benefits of eye-closure as an aid to retrieval, and offer insight into why hypnosis, which usually involves eye-closure, may facilitate eyewitness recall.     

试论师幼良好人际关系的特点和形成

情感性、民主平等性、多样性是良好师幼人际关系的重要特点.为了形成良好的师幼人际关系,教师应形成有关幼儿的准确印象;加强与幼儿的沟通与理解;综合运用各种交往手段.