Memory and Nation Building: From Ancient Times to the Islamic State

Memory and Nation Building explores the role of collective memory in state formation, comparing three Mediterranean societies - Egypt, Greece, and Albania - and analyzing modern collective memory systems and resistance.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 224 pages
Publication date: 06 May 2021
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

The intricate subject of collective memory is explored in Memory and Nation Building, a book by author Michael Galaty. Maurice Halbwachs, a sociologist, first coined the term in the first half of the 20th century. According to Michael Galaty, the first states appropriated traditional collective memory systems to create their identities. With this in mind, he contrasts three Mediterranean civilizations, Egypt, Greece, and Albania, each of which followed a distinct path to statehood. Galaty attributes these disparities to different responses to collective memory across time, with climaxes during the Ottoman era, when all three were ruled by the Ottomans.

Egypt was distinguished by profound national unity-related memory tropes that spanned all of Egyptian history. Greece, on the other hand, experienced memory fragmentation, which was exacerbated by periods of imperial conquest. Albania adapted and assimilated when faced with foreign domination, resulting in the formation of an indigenous Albanian state in 1912.

Galaty develops a diachronic model of state formation and its relationship to memory and political control. Memory and Nation Building concludes with an analysis of modern collective memory systems and resistance to those systems, which are frequently framed as conflicts over "heritage." The short-lived Islamic State's formation and collapse serves as an example of extreme memory work, with lessons for other modern nations.

Weight: 308g
Dimension: 220 x 154 x 12 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781538158388