The Empire Air Training Scheme: Identity, Empire and Memory

supported by a vast array of literature. 47 It is central to this thesis to understandconstruction as a means of control, first in the application to the images of recruitmentand then in the restructuring of the Australian national identity in later decades.Hobsbawn acknowledged such reconstruction in images. He argued that concepts ofidentity need not be static and rapid transformations in society weaken and destroy thesocial patterns for which traditions have been designed producing new traditions. 48Such a transformation, conforming to changes in culture and society, has governed theimage of EATS.Closely linked with identity construction is the current debate surrounding thecomplexity of memory. The two exist in a reciprocal relationship. The theory of thesocial construction of the memory for the collective, is best associated with MauriceHalbwachs claiming all memory depends, on the one hand, on the group in which one49lives and, on the other, to the status one holds in that group. An alternativesuggestion is that the collective does not possess a memory but only barren sites uponwhich individuals inscribe shared narratives.’ 50 While this debate will continue thedisparate sources that collective memory draws upon and the multiplicity of culturalmyths that are appropriated for various ideological or political purposes, interact to47 See for example, Klaus Elder ‘A theory of collective identity,’ European Journal of Social Theory,12, 4, 2009, 427. David Gross, The Past in Ruins. Tradition and the critique of modernity Amherst:University of Massachusetts Press 1992, 3.48 Ibid. 4.49 Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory Translated Lewis A. Coser, Chicago: University ofChicago Press. 1992.As a result, Halbwachs concludes that there are no purely individual memories,i.e. memories that would belong only to the individual, and of which the individual would be theunique source. Joanna Bourke was one to counter this argument maintaining ‘The collective does notpossess a memory, only barren sites upon which individuals inscribe shared narratives, infused withpower relations.’ see Joanna Bourke, ‘Introduction. Remembering War.’ Journal of ContemporaryHistory, 39. 4. 2004. 473. Also refer to Joan Beaumont, ‘Anzac Day to VP Day: arguments andinterpretations.’ Journal of the Australian War Memorial 40, 2007, 3-12. Jay Winter’s work,Remembering war; the Great War between memory and history in the twentieth century, New Haven:Yale University Press, 2006. Sites of memory, sites of mourning: the Great War in European CulturalHistory Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, Jay Winter and Emmanuel Sivens, ed. War andRemembrance in the twentieth century Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1999. Kate DarianSmith and Paula Hamilton, Memory and History in the Twentieth Century Melbourne: OxfordUniversity Pres 1994.150 Joanna Bourke, ‘Introduction Remembering War,’ Journal of Contemporary History, 39, 4, 2004,474.13