Karin Hansson, Nour Shimei
Research utilizing Collective Memory-Work (CMW) has steadily increased over the past 30 years, from an average of 11 studies per year between 1994–2003 to an average of 98 studies per year in the past decade.1 A search on Web of Knowledge (WoK) highlights the diversity of disciplines that have employed the method in the past five years. At the same time, this search reveals that the method is still not mainstream. Of the 630 entries returned by a Google Scholar search for “Collective Memory-Work,” only 20 are indexed on WoK, indicating that only a fraction has been published in more established venues.
This workshop begins with a presentation of an overview of these research findings. The central question in this overview is how the emancipatory spirit of the method has endured its rise in more mainstream research and how it shapes the conduct of research.
With emancipation we mean two different things: 1) to free a person from something restraining but also then 2) replacing it with something else. More broadly, it is also used for efforts to procure economic and social rights, political rights, or equality, often for a specifically disenfranchised group. Emancipation also implies a negotiation of power.
The collective memory-work method is potentially emancipatory when it raises awareness of how we are shaped by and shape oppressive mechanisms through our everyday actions, as “everyday life is how society reproduces itself” (Haug 1992, p 19). Proponents of the method emphasize this emancipatory and feminist ambition, focusing on strengthening the participants by showing how their individual experiences are formed by collectively reproduced structures.
Purpose: The purpose of the workshop is to bring in our own CMW practice and discuss how emancipation plays a role in this and to identify which theories have been especially useful in contributing to the emancipatory ambition of CMW.
The workshop’s outcomes might be further developed into, for example, a joint article (for the academic community) and/or an educational resource (for educators/practitioners).
Organization: The workshop is organized by Karin Hansson (professor of media technology, Södertörn University) and Nour Shimei (PhD in social work, Ashkelon Academic College).
The research overview is conducted by Karin Hansson, Nour Shimei, Nita Mishra (PhD in Development Studies Limerick University), Sofia Lundmark, and Fatima Jonsson (associate professors of media technology, Södertörn University).
1 These numbers do not exclude publications where the term is used for other meanings, nor do they include works that use alternative terms such as “memory work”.
Nour Shimei is a social worker and lecturer at Ashkelon Academic College, Israel. Her work focuses on the lives of marginalized girls and women, developing partnership-based relationships through participatory research methodologies and community social work. She uses the collective memory-work method in both research and teaching.
Karin Hansson is an artist and professor of media technology at Södertörn University, with a focus on collaborative processes online and an interest in participatory methodologies. She has used the collective memory-work method both in research and arts contexts.