This article considers young people's socialization into mnemonic communities in 14 European countries. It argues that such socialization is an intersubjective and selective process that, to a great degree, depends on the particular social environment that conditions the discourses on pasts available to young people. Drawing on memory studies, it recognizes memory as a valid alternative to the institutionalized past (history) but envisages the two as inextricably connected. Given this, it identifies several strategies adopted by young people in order to socialize understandings of the past. While these strategies vary, some reveal receptivity to populist and far right ideologies. Our study demonstrates how internalization of political heritage via mnemonic socialization within families is conditioned by both the national political agenda and socio-economic situation experienced across Europe.
AssmannA. and ShorttL., (2012), ‘Memory and political change: introduction’, in AssmannA. and ShorttL. (eds), Memory and Political Change, 1–14, London: Palgrave Macmillan.
BirthK., (2006), ‘Past times: temporal structuring of history and memory’, Ethos, 34 (2): 192–210.
4.
BourdieuP., (2005), ‘Outline of the theory of practice: structures and the habitus’, in SpiegelG. M. (ed.), Practicing History: New Directions in Historical Writing after the Linguistic Turn, 179–198, New York: Routledge.
5.
BoyarinJ., (1994), ‘Space, time, and the politics of memory’, in BoyarinJ. (ed.), Remapping Memory: The Politics of Time Space, 1–37, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
6.
BuchowskiM., (2006), ‘The specter of orientalism in Europe: from exotic other to stigmatized brother’, Anthropology Quarterly, 79 (3): 463–482.
7.
CappellettoF., (2003), ‘Long-term memory of extreme events: from autobiography to history’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 9: 241–260.
8.
DavisF., (1979), Yearning for Yesterday: A Sociology of Nostalgia, New York: Free Press.
DechezellesS., (2008), ‘The cultural basis of youth involvement in Italian extreme right-wing organisations’, Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 16 (3): 363–375.
11.
EyalG., (2004), ‘Identity and trauma: two forms of the will to memory’, History and Memory, 16 (1): 5–36.
HirschM., (1999), ‘Projectedmemory: Holocaust photographs in personal and public fantasy’, in BalM.CreweJ. and SpitzerL. (eds), Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present, 3–23, Hanover: University Press of New England.
20.
HoldsworthA., (2011), Television, Memory and Nostalgia, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
21.
JenningsM. K.StokerL. and BowersJ., (2009), ‘Politics across generations: family transmission reexamined’, The Journal of Politics, 71 (3): 782–799.
22.
KeightleyE. and PickeringM., (2012), The Mnemonic Imagination: Remembering as Creative Practice, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
23.
KleinK. L., (2000), ‘On the emergence of memory in historical discourse’, Representations, 69: 127–150.
LeonovaA., (2009), ‘Electoral choice, cultural capital, and xenophobic attitudes in Russia, 1994–2006’, in LaruelleM. (ed.), Russian Nationalism and the National Reassertion of Russia, 145–184, London and New York: Routledge.
26.
LubbersM. and ScheepersP., (2002), ‘French Front National voting: a micro and macro perspective’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 25: 120–149.
27.
MahA., (2010), ‘Memory, uncertainty and industrial ruination: Walker Riverside, Newcastle upon Tyne’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 34 (2): 398–413.
28.
Miller-IdrissC., (2009), Blood and Culture: Youth, Right-Wing Extremism, and National Belonging in Contemporary Germany, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
29.
MuddeC., (2007), Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
30.
NarskiiI., (2004,) ‘Konstruirovanie mifa o grazhdanskoi voine i osobennosti kollektivnogo zabyvaniia na Urale v 1917–1922 gg.’, Ab Imperio, 2: 211–236.
31.
NoraP., (1989), ‘Between memory and history: Les Leux de memoire’, Representations, 26: 7–24.
OchmanE., (2009), ‘Municipalities and the search for the local past: fragmented memory of the Red Army in Upper Silesia’, East European Politics and Society, 23 (3): 392–420.
34.
OlickJ. and RobbinsJ., (1998), ‘Social memory studies: from “collective memory” to the historical sociology of mnemonic practices’, Annual Review of Sociology, 24: 105–140.
35.
PentzoldC., (2009), ‘Fixing the floating gap: the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia as a global place’, Memory Studies, 2 (2): 255–272.
PineF.KaneffD. and HaukanesH., (2004), ‘Introduction. Memory, politics and religion: a perspective on Europe’, in PineF.KaneffD. and HaukanesH. (eds), Memory, Politics and Religion: The Past Meets the Present in Europe, 1–29, Münster: Lit Verlag.
RadleyA., (1990), ‘Artefacts, memory and a sense of the past’, in MiddletonD. and EdwardsD. (eds), Collective Remembering, 46–59, London: Sage Publications.
40.
RhodesJ., (2009), ‘The political breakthrough of the BNP: the case of Burnley’, British Politics, 4 (1): 22–46.
ShawC. and ChaseM. (eds), (1989), The Imagined Past: History and Nostalgia, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
44.
ShoshanN., (2008), ‘Placing the extremes: cityscape, ethnic “others” and young right extremists in East Berlin’, Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 16 (3): 377–391.
45.
ShotterJ., (1990), ‘The social construction of remembering and forgetting’, in MiddletonD. and EdwardsD. (eds), Collective Remembering, 120–138, London: Sage Publications.
SturkinM., (1997), Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the Aids Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
