soc 118cm super simple vocab breakdown

Collective memory

consists of "images of the past" that social groups select and reproduce through specific commemorative practices to define their shared identity

Intersubjectivity

refers to the shared "common domain" of meaning and experience that exists between members of a group, allowing individual recollections to be framed within a group's social context

Mnemonic entrepreneur

(also called a symbolic or reputational entrepreneur)

is an individual or group who actively works to frame a specific event as "commemorable" and creates the vehicles necessary to preserve its memory

Memory work

is the intentional human activity and social labor required to produce, maintain, and transmit specific recollections of the past

Invented traditions

are sets of repetitive practices, often quite recent in origin, that use ritual and symbolic rules to establish a factitious continuity with a suitable historical past

Usable past

refers to the selective use and reinterpretation of historical materials to serve current political needs or legitimate present-day social movements

Difficult past

is a history characterized by trauma, conflict, or shameful events—such as slavery or the Holocaust—that a society feels a moral or political pressure to confront and "work through"

Restorative nostalgia

attempts to rebuild a "lost home" by protecting an absolute, singular version of truth and often fueling national or religious revivals

Reflective nostalgia

dwells on the fragments of memory and the ambivalence of human longing without trying to reconstruct a single, absolute past

Reputation

is a social "moral identity" constructed within collective memory through the selective reconstruction of a biography and the evaluation of an individual's motives

Natal Alienation

is a core mechanism of slavery where individuals are severed from their rights to an ancestry and heritage, effectively becoming a "socially dead person" culturally isolated from their past

Carrier groups

are the collective agents—such as elites or religious leaders—who have ideal or material interests inBestowing meaning upon a traumatic event in the public sphere

Theodicy

is an interpretive vocabulary, either religious or secular, used to explain and bestow meaning upon the human experiences of suffering, evil, and injustice

Collected memory

is the aggregate sum of individual recollections within a group, based on the individualistic principle that only people actually remember, even if their memories are socially framed

instrumental memory

is the process where the past is consciously manipulated by social groups or elites to serve current needs and shore up the legitimacy of present-day political or social structures; legitimacy

cultural memory

is the system of values, artifacts, and institutions that a society uses to sustain its shared identity through the continuous circulation of an active "canon" and the passive storage of an "archive"

inertial memory

refers to the process where certain aspects of the past persist or naturally fade away based on their own momentum or the death of their "carriers," rather than through intentional social or political manipulation

iconoclasm

the deliberate destruction or defacement of monuments and structures for political reasons, which serves to ensure that the meaning of these symbols is actively contested and discussed by the community rather than being dismissed as random vandalism.

vandalism

is generally defined as random acts of destruction or defacement that lack a deliberate political motivation

contested reputation

is a social identity currently in the process of being formed and reformed through an ongoing struggle for definition where various groups clash over an individual's moral makeup and motives

subcultural reputation

is a social identity that is solidified differently by various groups who may choose to minimize, justify, or be completely against certain aspects of an individual's moral makeup

negative reputation

is a social identity where an individual is consensually and robustly defined as "evil," based on a collective reconstruction of their biography that attributes negative traits to their fundamental moral character

dualistic theodicy

is an interpretive framework that explains suffering as a necessary part of an ongoing cosmic struggle between good and evil, moving toward the certain and ultimate triumph of the good

tragic theodicy

is an interpretive framework that rejects binary distinctions of good and evil to focus on the human complexities of suffering, framing grief and loss as inherent parts of life while inviting reflection and resilience through multi-vocal expressions like poetry or art

mastering the past

is a form of repressing or trying to "get beyond" a difficult history, such as Germany’s Nazi era, and is often contrasted with the more genuine, acknowledging process of "___" the past

working through the past

is a process of genuine critical acknowledgment and reflection on a difficult history that seeks to clear collective consciousness by confronting past misdeeds rather than repressing or erasing them

Monumental history

overly honoring the past individuals that were big figures of the past (inflation of an individual) glorifying the past

Antiquarian history

liking things because they’re old, collecting and loving old things simply because it exists (holding onto things) academic obsession with the old which can affect our progress

Critical history

is a mode of engaging with the past that seeks to critique and dissolve specific historical narratives by bringing them before a "tribunal" of judgment, thereby freeing the living to progress and shed new light on history