Preface - Michael Cole
Introduction - David Middleton and Derek Edwards
Conversational Remembering - David Middleton and Derek Edwards
A Social Psychological Approach
Artefacts, Memory and a Sense of the Past - Alan Radley
Collective Memory, Ideology and the British Royal Family - Michael Billig
The Reconstruction of Abraham Lincoln - Barry Schwartz
Ronald Reagan Misremembered - Michael Schudson
The Social Construction of Remembering and Forgetting - John Shotter
Organizational Forgetting - Yrj[um]o Engestr[um]om, Katherine Brown, Ritva Engestr[um]om and Kirsi Koistinen
An Activity-Theoretical Perspective
Sharing Knowledge, Celebrating Identity - Julian E Orr
Community Memory in a Service Culture
Folk Explanation in Language Survival - Carol A Padden
Social Memory in Soviet Thought - David Bakhurst

Profoundly challenging the traditional view of memory as the product and property of individual minds, Collective Remembering is concerned with remembering and forgetting as socially constituted activities. The starting point is a conceptualization of remembering and forgetting as forms of social action. Individual memories cannot be understood as `internal mental processes' which occur independently of the interpretive and communicative practices which characterize a particular society or culture. Individuals `read', account for and negotiate their memories within the pragmatics of social life. Contributions also explore the collective processes through which communities' social memories are created, sustained and transformed - in families, other groups and cultures, organizations.