Preamble Narratives and Social Memory - Universidade do Minho

Narratives and Social Memory from the Perspective of Social Representations of HistoryJames H. LiuConclusionsSRH have been a vibrant area of research in recent years, but their study has beenrestricted mainly to the methodology and epistemology of cross-cultural and socialpsychology. With the growing interest in narrative inquiry and social memory across thesocial sciences and humanities, there is no reason why more qualitative methods groundedin more social constructionist epistemologies could not make important and fresh newcontributions to the area. SRs are squarely situated between the individual, their groups,and society, and thus epistemologically and theoretically have much in common with whatis valued in narrative inquiry. The empirical building blocks assembled by SRT are just that,building blocks rather than finished, discrete products, and I for one would welcome qualitativeresearchers making use of them as tools for refining their narrative inquiries. It is myhope that this chapter goes some ways towards stimulating interdisciplinary and transdisciplinaryconversations and collaborations in the future.ReferencesBamberg, M. (2007) Introductory remarks. In M.Bamberg (Ed.) Narratives- State of the Art, pp 1-5.Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing.Cabecinhas, R., Liu, J.H., Licata, L., Klein, O., Mendes, J., Feijó, J. & Niyubahwe, A. (2011) Hope in Africa?Social representations of world history and the future in six African countries. InternationalJournal of Psychology, 46 (5), 354-367. DOI: 10.1080/00207594.2011.560268Coase, R., & Wang, N. (2012) How China Became Capitalist. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Doise, W., Clémence, A., & Lorenzi-Cioldi, F. (1993) The Quantitative Analysis of Social Representations.Hertfordshire, UK: Harvester Wheatsheaf.Doise, W., Spini, D., & Clémence, A. (1999) Human rights studied as social representations in a crossnationalcontext. European Journal of Social Psychology, 29, 1-29.Hagenaars, J. A., & McCutcheon, A. L. (2002) Applied Latent Class Analysis. Cambridge University Press.Halbwachs, M. (1950/1980) The collective memory. New York: Harper & Row.Hanke, K., Liu, J,H., Sibley, C., Paez, D., Gaines, S.P., Jr, Moloney, G., et al. (under review) Dreaming of ourGlobal Humanity with Barbarians at the Gates: New methods for examining heroes andvillains of world history across cultures.Hermans, H., & Dimaggio, G. (2007) Self, Identity, and Globalization in Times of Uncertainty: ADialogical Analysis. Review of General Psychology, 31–61.Hilton, D.J., & Liu, J.H. (2008) Culture and inter-group relations. The role of social representations ofhistory. In R. Sorrentino & S. Yamaguchi (eds.) The Handbook of Motivation and Cognition:The Cultural Context, pp. 343-368. New York: Guilford.Ho, D.Y.F., Peng, S.Q., Lai, A.C., Chan, S.F.F. (2001) Indigenization and beyond: Methodological relationalismin the study of personality across cultural traditions. Journal of Personality, 69(6),925-953.Huang, L.L., Liu, J.H., & Chang, M. (2004) The “Double Identity” of Taiwanese Chinese: A dilemma ofpolitics and culture rooted in history. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 7(2), 149-189.Narratives and social memory: theoretical and methodological approaches22