Editorial: Special Issue Collective Memory-Work

Other Education, 2020

This essay is about Collective Memory-Work (CMW) and the learning opportunities offered by different ways of putting Collective Memory-Work into practice. I will give a brief contextualisation of the development of CMW and describe its core tenets including its character as a process of reconstruction of results of earlier education and societalisation. Then I am going to unpack different models of applications of CMW for their learning potential for participants. For this purpose I will revert to illustrations of the methodical steps in CMW to demonstrate the shifts of learning opportunities in four ideal typical models. The models presented in the essay are meant to offer a way to describe what happens if something is done in a particular manner. By being able to describe effects of opening or closing down of learning opportunities, it will be easier for anyone considering the use of CMW to plan and conduct their own project against a background of emancipatory learning.

(ed.) 2018 166 pages ISBN: 978-1-138-23791-9 (hbk) £ 120.00 ISBN: 978-1-138-23792-6 (pbk) £ 38.99 ISBN: 978-1-315-29871-9 (ebk) £ 18.50 Published by Routledge, New York and Abingdon Review by Brigitte Hipfl This collected volume edited by Corey Johnson is very stimulating in several ways. It provides the insights of Johnson's decade long use of collective memory work as a research method and activist tool, based on his own research-activism and on his role as methodological supervisor of doctoral research. The fact that collective memory work is a collaborative process is affirmed by the fact that all the chapters are co-authored, with Johnson always being one of the authors. Through both theoretical contextualizations and thorough discussions of questions regarding the implementation of collective memory work in various research examples, the reader learns what this method can accomplish, and what the challenges are when working with this specific methodological approach. The first chapter by Corey Johnson, Dana Kivel and Luc Cousineau, gives a concise introduction to Frigga Haug`s development of collective memory work, stressing the epistemological roots in social constructionism and feminism and its emancipatory intentions. The authors position collective memory work as one version of participatory action research. They do a good job in showing how Haug's approach has been taken up in Australia, New Zealand and the US, focussing, in particular, on the expansion from women's issues to men's, queer, and transgender issues. The chapter ends with the authors' own experiences with collective memory work-which is a feature that characterizes all chapters. All of the chapters include author's reflections and/or the discussion of their experiences. Part II of the book comprises six chapters, all of which utilize collective memory work for in-depth explorations of gender-and race-related experiences of inequalities, marginalisation and domination. Each chapter also puts the focus on specific elements of

The potential of Collective Memory-Work as a method of learning, 2021

Over 30 years the Marxist-Feminist method of Collective Memory-Work has been applied and adapted in a multitude of projects across the globe. Collective Memory-Work dissolves boundaries between research and learning. As a method it is interdisciplinary, deliberately inchoate, and therefore alive. (Frigga Haug) This book explains traditions and trajectories in adaptations of Collective Memory-Work. It encourages to experiment with the method, and to appropriate history from a position of everyday life.

Sites: a journal of social anthropology and cultural studies, 2017

Collective memory-work is a group method in feminist social research that involves the collective analysis of individual written memories. This method is well-established in educational research in Australasia, and yet it is curiously absent in social anthropology. Our memory-work collective experimented with this research method as a means of gaining a more nuanced understanding of our subjectivities as academic mothers employed by a neoliberal university in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Despite its potential weaknesses, we are convinced that collective memory-work as a research method can be valuable when all participants seek academic outputs, where power imbalances in the group are minimal, and where trusting relationships are pre-established. Our experiment with this method provided a context in which we could enact a feminist ethic of care to critically reflect on our positions as academic mothers in the neoliberal tertiary environment. We also regard the method as a form of 'feminist slow scholarship' offering a valuable opportunity to develop individual and institutional structural resistance.

As a research method memory-work deserves much more attention than it enjoys currently. The method originates from the West-German feminist movement of the 1970’s and 1980’s. It was developed as a collective research tool to bring the experiences of women which were found to be absent in scientific discourse into debate. The method in a nutshell: i) Group members discuss the topic at hand to understand their individual points of view on the matter ii) Members write stories of an event relating to the topic which they experienced themselves. iii) Stories are analysed by the group in a set procedure of ‘deconstruction’. iv) Results of the text-analyses (step iii) and initial discussion (step i) are set in relation to each other. The intertwined process of giving meaning to one’s own experiences and struggling for social recognition of one’s own image in a specific historical and material situation come to the fore when the material generated by participants is analysed. The reconstruction of the scenes gives rise to new interpretations and opens the view for alternative routes of action. As a research tool memory work has been used in feminist studies, but also on topics like migration, media experiences, teacher training, sport, tourist experiences. As a method developed from within an emancipative social movement memory-work offers a tool for social science in an enhanced attempt to understand the human essence in its reality as the ensemble of social relations and effectively help in generating articulated alternatives.

Socialist Register, 2019

P. Luff; J. Hindmarsh; and C. C. Heath (eds.): Workplace studies..., 2000

https://www.routledge.com/Collective-Memory-Work-A-Methodology-for-Learning-With-and-From-Lived/Johnson/p/book/9781138237926, 2018

The seemingly mundane events of daily life create a complex knowledge base of lived experience to be explored. But how does one research common experiences and account for context, culture, and identity? A dilemma arises because experience is not just embedded in events, but also in the socially constructed meanings associated with those events. This book details the philosophical underpinnings, design features and implementation strategies of Collective Memory Work – a methodology frequently employed by social justice activists/scholars. Collective Memory Work can provide scholars with unique and nuanced ways to solve problems for and with their participants. Most importantly, the chapters also detail projects and social justice in action, analysing their participants’ real stories and experiences: projects that focus on LGBTQ youth, #blacklivesmatter activists, white faculty working at historically Black colleges and universities, men’s media consumption and much more. Written in an engaging and accessible style, readers will come to understand the potential of their own qualitative research using Collective Memory Work.

Community as Curriculum: 'little pockets of hope ' (Freire and Horton: 1990, 94).