War memory,national attachment and generational identity in Australia

Abstract

In this article we use a module from the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes 2007 to analyse how particular events in history resonate with Australians. We emphasize three significant findings: (1) evidence of a strong level of attachment to the world wars and an equivalent significance given to the terrorist events of 9/11 and the 2002 Bali bombings, with far less importance given to other event types; (2) a surprisingly weak correlation between the experience of events in adolescence and the assigning of historical significance; (3) indication that both closeness to the nation and a strong sense of worldliness is important in explaining attachment to the past. Overall the data challenge recent theories of postmodern memory and a range of survey results that supports Mannheim’s cohort theory. Instead, we point to the resilience of historical events to remain culturally significant, particularly through the emergence of a cosmopolitan collective memory.

Keywords

collective memory cosmopolitanism gender militarism nationalism terrorism

In the last decade a revised postmodern thesis has become increasingly influential in sociological understandings of collective memory, generations and social change. In the late 20th century a key characteristic of postmodern theory¹ was the belief that contemporary culture is focused on the present and has a disdain for the past. This has included characterizing postmodernity as having a ‘historical deafness’ (Jameson, 1991: xi) or ‘amnesia’ (1991: xv), being an age ‘opened up from the hold of tradition’ (Giddens, 1999: 4), narrated in ways in which history loses ‘its great heroes, its great dangers, its great voyages’ and generally ‘nation-states … and historical traditions … losing their attraction’ (Lyotard, 1984: 14). In cases where societal engagement with the past endured, this was interpreted as either being the remnants of an outdated cultural tradition or as representative of a new consumerist age of weak cultural ties, a hyperreal (Baudrillard, 1988) world where nostalgia and heritage is dominant over serious historical engagement. The new postmodern thesis, by contrast, gives greater emphasis to the ways in which popular culture has overall increased our engagements with history, with digital media in particular expanding our access to and widening the range of pasts available to be consumed. This societal shift is typically referred to in terms of being the latest ‘memory boom’ in western culture (Winter, 2006).

Whereas postmodern scholars had previously emphasized the absence or trivialization of history in popular culture, now the connection to history is cast as ever-present, inerasable and archived, but as such being disorientating beyond ‘the cognitive and material processes of capture, storage and retrieval, in other words forgetting’ (Hoskins, 2011: 271). Landsberg, for example, argues that popular culture representations romanticize history but simultaneously cause it to have ‘prosthetic’ properties. She contends that as it has become ‘possible for these memories to be acquired by anyone’, irrespective of age, ethnicity or geographic location, and as such they ‘challenge more traditional forms of memory that are premised on claims of authenticity’ (Landsberg, 2004: 2–3). The contemporary postmodern memory thesis, then, is not only concerned with the detachment we feel from the distant past but the ways in which events today fail to provide functional equivalents for modern national memory. Sturken (2007), for example, has argued that this historical discontinuity is reflected in the debates and controversies surrounding the selection of appropriate forms of mourning and commemoration at New York’s ‘Ground Zero’, with the ‘9/11’ attacks unable to be understood within the established cultural patterns and memorial genres of the nation. Hoskins (2011) mounts a similar argument, contending that the post-scarcity character of digital media resulted in a saturated media coverage of the 2005 ‘7/7’ London bombings, which provided the public with a limited capacity to make sense of it. The postmodern thesis on memory thus contends that the multiplicity of pasts we now consume means that there is little societal uniformity around our attachment to history, either in terms of deference to the cultural importance of modern foundation moments or in relation to the effect of certain events on generational identity. In the context of established collective memory paradigms this postmodern account counters both Maurice Halbwachs’ (1950) perspective, which argues that the narration of established historical events frames contemporary societal beliefs, and Karl Mannheim’s (1952 [1928]) theory that population cohorts in modern societies share ‘a common location in the social and historical process’ with them embodying ‘a certain characteristic mode of thought and experience’ (1952 [1928]: 291).

In this article, we aim to test this new postmodern thesis by drawing on a module of closed questions in the 2007 Australian Survey of Social Attitudes (referred to as AuSSA 2007 [Phillips et al., 2007] from here on), which asked ordinary Australians how they relate to their military and civil history. We put forward two hypotheses with the aim of using public opinion to empirically examine the relationship between Australian collective memory and history: (1) that a waning of societal links to history will be represented empirically in a weak attachment to traditional national historical moments, particularly in relation to the world wars; (2) that the dissolving of a generational effect will be empirically evident in a fragmentation of particular age cohorts attributing particular significance to events that occurred during their critical period of adolescence and early childhood. While a variety of studies in the United States have used survey data in relation to collective memory, in particular relating to Mannheim’s generational thesis (Griffin, 2004; Corning and Schuman, 2015; Schwartz and Schuman, 2005), there has been no systematic testing of how particular historical events resonate with ordinary citizens in Australia. While empirical analysis is not absent from postmodern memory studies, such studies are characterized by an interpretive hermeneutic approach that typically attempts to illustrate theory rather than test it. As such, this postmodern scholarship provides little basis to answer questions about the extent and distribution of postmodern social forces as they relate to various groups in society. As Schwartz and Schuman have argued, this reflects the postmodern memory paradigm that works to ‘deemphasize, even disregard, what ordinary individuals believe about the past’ (2005: 184), broadly failing to account for cultural reception in its analysis. In contrast, our survey methodology concerns the ways in which individual Australians relate to history (cf. Donoghue and Tranter, 2015) with respondents being asked to rate on a Likert scale the importance of a list of historical events closely connected to Australian national identity, including the First World War, the Second World War, the Vietnam War and the terrorism events of the 9/11 attacks and the 2002 Bali bombings.² In addition, the survey question sought responses to a selection of historical disasters, crises, sporting achievements and the moon landing.

Sociology of war and memory at the level of the individual

Before outlining the method and data of the study, we will explore the dominant literature on memory and foundation moments, as it provides a counterpoint to the new postmodern memory thesis, particularly in relation to war. While the traditional sociological approach to studying war memory emphasizes the cultural significance of history, it shares some methodological similarities with the postmodern literature as it is also dominated by the use of interpretive hermeneutic approaches to comprehend the symbolic meanings assigned to, and remembrance rites related with the mobilization for war. For the modernist literature on war memory the empirical focus has been on the symbolic importance of battlefields and memorials, war propaganda and authoritarian personalities (Barber, 1972; Berezin, 1997; Schwartz, 1987; Wagner-Pacifici and Schwartz, 1991; Warner, 1959). The hermeneutic methodological approach and similar empirical themes are also found in the broad sociological literature on war memory in Australia (McKay and West, 2014), including how meaning-making occurs in relation to an exaltation of a masculine national type, Judeo-Christian notions of sacrifice and redemption, and imperial notions of exploration and adventure (Ball, 2004; Crotty, 2001; Phillips, 1996). As with other settler societies, Australian war narratives have also been analysed regarding how they have also contributed to a ‘collective amnesia’ (Walsh, 2001) about the violent dispossession, decimation and dehumanization of indigenous people (Howe, 2012; Moreton-Robinson, 2010; Reynolds, 2013). This scholarship has provided deep insights into the interconnections between war, the military and civil society. However, without any strong empirical reference to public opinion in their conclusions they ultimately fail to sufficiently address social change as it relates to and is reflected in individual beliefs. The neglect of analysing the levels and shifts in individual beliefs about history has contributed to this literature emphasizing social conformity, political orthodoxy and social consensus.

The assumptions about belief as it relates to Australian war memory are evident in the scholarship informed by a Durkheimian perspective, for example in characterizing Anzac (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) mythology as a kind of civil religion (Inglis, 1985; Kapferer, 1988; West, 2008a). However, assumptions about the uniformity of belief are equally evident within the critical perspective that emphasizes the hegemonic ways in which war history is used to legitimize conservative ideologies to the detriment of lower socioeconomic groups, women, ethnic minorities and younger generations (Crotty, 2001; Jamrozik, 2004; Lake and Reynolds, 2010; McKenna and Ward, 2007). While the critical perspective notes that national identity is not representative of cultural diversity in contemporary Australia, it nevertheless holds that it is the dominant hegemonic belief. So in both traditions of analysis there is assumed to be a high level of consensus and societal attachment to key national historical events. The intellectual conflict between the two perspectives is focused on the social and political mechanisms at play in the establishment of this commitment rather than considering differences or fragmentation in belief.

The dearth of concern with the distribution of individual beliefs, though, is not only related to broader issues of methodological bias in the discipline but is also a reflective of modern warfare itself and the collective memory attached to it. The argument we put forward here is that the reason hermeneutic approaches have been so dominant in attempting to understand the memory of war is that this approach is thought to be consistent with the ideological character of modern war itself. While warfare is arguably a universal human condition, as outlined in the introduction to this special issue, its ideological dimensions are uniquely related to modern society, in particular to the two world wars. The First World War is not only thought to represent the beginning of total war (Shaw, 1988), or what Mann alternatively refers to as ‘citizen warfare’ (1988: 171), it establishes, according to Winter (1995), the framework for our contemporary attachment to remembrance as a whole. Unparalleled in death tolls and international mobilization, total war impacts upon every member of the nation and infiltrates all spheres of civil society. As much as the First World War was distinguished from previous conflicts by technological advances in the instruments of war and the deployment of scientific techniques to induce discipline and social control on soldiers (Foucault, 1977: 135; McNeill, 1983: 186), it was simultaneously the outcome of growing democratic nationalism in the 18th and 19th centuries (Gellner, 1964, 1983). As Anderson (1983) argues, the rise in egalitarian nationalism legitimized sacrifice in warfare, with patriotic duty typically associated with a cult of masculinity that saw individual enlistment to fight and national mobilization for war as an ennobling rite of passage involving blood sacrifice (Mangan, 1996). As Halbwachs details, this involved a forgetting of bourgeois traditions of remembering warfare, for example in relation to an elitist focus on those in the military hierarchy and their valour in battle, and the forming of an attachment ‘to the recent past, which was continuous with the present’ (1992: 138). The ideological element of the First World War was extended in the Second World War, with moralistic sentiment entering the conflict through framing the military alliances of the ‘Axis’ powers and ‘Allies’. The latter were romanticized as the protectors of freedom and democracy (Tiryakian, 1999: 483), further establishing the symbolic connection between military mobilization and a moral cause. In this environment, the power of memory became a key aspect of the justification for waging war, and has subsequently formed a basis for the dominant symbolic pollution narrative around evil used in the public sphere and political debates to urge constraint, diplomatic negotiation and to demonize contemporary authority figures (Olick and Levy, 1997; Smith, 2005).

The hermeneutic approach to memory has allowed for insightful readings and understandings of the ideological significance of warfare which would not be achieved simply through reference to attitudes.However, since this perspective does not document the distribution of individual beliefs about history, such studies have inadvertently de-emphasized social plurality. While in the mass society of the 19th century this diversity and conflict would arguably be minimal, in order to comprehend collective memory in the 21st century we require methodological approaches more attentive to cultural diversity. Certainly rapid social change has meant that we need to avoid simply explaining the cultural relevance of any historical event as given, or a mere reflection of the extent of death and devastation associated with it. Rather, in Alexander et al.’s (2004) terms, it needs to be understood in relation to the meaning-making process of cultural trauma, where painful events are mediated by their relation to collective identities, processes of remembering and social agency. Documenting the levels and spread of attachment and belief about wars and other events in history is an important part in comprehending the symbolic system of a society. Survey methodology of course does not identify agency in relation to historical meaning-making, but it can give us insight into the effectiveness of social action related to it. For example, it is important to establish the validity of the assumed significance of the Second World War and contrast this with its representational significance within the contemporary memory boom, involving a shift in ‘the balance of creation, adaptation, and circulation of memory’ (Winter, 2006: 26). While the prominence of the Second World War as a historical event has been accounted for in terms of the role of ‘witness’ in the public sphere and the challenging of the role of the expert in the interpretation of history, we have little knowledge about how such witness accounts will be differentially received. For example, Winter argues that a key part of the memory boom occurred in 1970s ‘when the victims of the Holocaust came out of the shadows, and when a wide public was finally, belatedly prepared to see them, honor them, and hear what they had to say’ (Winter, 2006: 27). For this reason some scholars have even postulated that the contemporary scholarly interest in memory is itself a repercussion of the Holocaust (Connerton, 2009: 1). However, as with any message, such testimony can be accepted or rejected, seen as worthy or unworthy.

The postmodern paradigm of memory studies not only emerged out this growth of popular interest in memory but is itself frequently part of its identity politics. It has been inferred by postmodern scholars that the heightened levels of contestation by interest groups in the remembering of history, a key feature of the memory boom, equates to social fragmentation around the past and a decline in attachment to the nation. However, the suspicion of positivist methods has meant that postmodernists have not put these claims up for rigorous empirical investigation. Survey research as it has been incorporated within cultural sociology in recent decades though, provides a way of utilizing insights into the attitudes and beliefs of the population without engaging in old tired debates about positivistic versus interpretive sociology. For example, the Halbwachs tradition of memory studies has been challenged by a series of surveys in the United States that have supported Mannheim’s (1952 [1928]) theory that attachment to historical events follows the cohort life-course rather than deference to foundation moments (Schuman and Rogers, 2004; Schuman and Scott, 1989). This has also provided a basis for various comparative studies, for example with Britain (Scott and Zac, 1993) and Israel (Schuman et al., 2003). Cultural sociologists have also utilized survey research to challenge the assumed cultural polarization between politically progressive and orthodox worldviews in the United States, typically referred to as the culture wars (Baker, 2005; Davis and Robinson, 1996; DiMaggio et al., 1996). Culturally orientated sociologists in the field of nations and nationalism studies have also used survey data to point to the danger of generalizing about the decline in western nationalism, highlighting the substantial diversity in levels of patriotism and types of patriotic national identification found between countries, stressing the need to understand nationalism in relation to its local cultural context as much as a reflection of global forces (Fenton, 2007; Kumar, 2010). Similarly, we argue that the survey research in this article has the potential to provide insights into the distribution of cultural sentiment in the unique cultural context of Australia (Clark, 2007; Smith and Phillips, 2006)

Data and methods

The data for this article are from AuSSA 2007 (Phillips et al., 2007). The survey is a large-scale national questionnaire with a representative sample of 2583 Australians, randomly drawn from a sampling frame of over 6500 respondents from the Australian electoral roll, with a response rate of 39 per cent. The AuSSA survey is a biannual research project designed to measure a range of social, cultural, political and economic attitudes and attributes. A number of measures in AuSSA 2007 were purpose-built for the present task of researching how individuals construct national memory, with one of the authors of this article involved in the survey design of the relevant ‘collective memory’ module. Drawing on academic and popular literature on Australian national identity, a number of historical events were selected to cover a diversity of sectors of society and event types: disasters, war, politics, sport and significant world events. While not an exhaustive list, the events selected are considered to be ‘iconic’ (Alexander, 2008) and are often portrayed within social commentary as ‘defining’ the Australian nation in terms of evoking collective memory.

Specifically respondents were asked:

There have been a lot of important national and world events over the past 100 years that have helped shape Australia. Different individuals and groups, however, relate to some historical episodes more than others. On a scale of 1 to 7, where 1 is Not at all important, and 7 is Very important, how much importance do the following have for you?

The range of closed-category responses included:

World War 1; Great Depression; World War 2; Moon Landing; Vietnam War; Dismissal of Gough Whitlam; Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster; Port Arthur Massacre; September 11 Terrorist Attacks; 2002 Bali Bombings; The 1932–33 Ashes ‘bodyline’ cricket series; Australia’s soccer world cup qualification over Uruguay in 2005; Australia II 1983 America’s Cup victory; Cathy Freeman’s Gold Medal at the Sydney 2000 Olympics.

This closed-question approach to studying collective memory can be contrasted with a range of studies in the United States that have used open-ended questions within national telephone questionnaires to comprehend how life-course influences what historical events respondents deem significant (Schuman and Scott, 1989) and the interpretation of particular historical figures (Schuman et al., 2005) and events (Scott and Zac, 1993). By requiring respondents simply to nominate events and not attribute a level of importance to them, these studies are limited in comprehending the relative cultural significance of historical events and event types. In contrast, the closed-question method we utilize allows for a better measure of the comparative importance individuals give to certain events and event types. In relation to wars, this is significant for informing debates about the relative importance of different wars, which can be contrasted with commemorative attention given to particular conflicts by the state, and the possibility of non-violent events providing an alternative history to warfare for societal remembrance and commemoration purposes. While the open-ended questionnaires typically emerge from specialized studies into collective memory, the closed-question design within a large national social survey such as AuSSA 2007 allows for a broader and deeper analysis of how memory relates to other social variables and attitudes.

As will be outlined in the results section below, age was identified in the preliminary analysis as one of the major independent variables in the data. As such we pay particular attention to the way in which established generational identities potentially represent a powerful correlational link to how collective memory is formed. We present age to reflect statistical and conceptually sound categories along four generational cohorts: Millennials/Generation Y (born 1983–90); Generation X (born 1966–82); Baby Boomers (born 1945–65); and the Silent Generation (Born 1909–44). National identity is another key experience and attribute that provides a crucial statistical context for understanding how collective memory is organized and recalled. The survey did not offer an extensive range of measures traditionally associated with Australian national identity such as ‘pride’ in the nation (Evans and Kelley, 2002; Phillips and Holton, 2004). This notwithstanding, the survey did afford a valid measure of national identity that tapped individual sentiment towards the nation by asking respondents ‘How close do you feel to Australia?’ We juxtapose feelings of national embrace and parochialism in the analysis with counter-measures in the survey of closeness to the ‘world’ as a whole (‘How close do you feel to the world as a whole?’), something we take as a measure of cosmopolitan disposition. Further, feelings of detachment from any form of national or global belonging are included to explain variation in collective memory consistent with our theoretical aim of assessing postmodern claims associated with detachment through responses of ‘Not very close’ and ‘Not close at all’ to the two questions cited above (manifest in the variable ‘Unattached’). In addition to age and national feeling, the research employs a range of social background measures that are consistent with an empirical sociological approach that seeks to delineate key social experiences associated with national identity. We particularly considered in our analysis the impacts of education, gender, religion, being born overseas, political orientation and geography on how Australian collective memory is possibly constructed.

In pursuit of our hypotheses, the analysis proceeds from univariate to multivariate analyses. First we consider where war and terrorism are ranked in importance in accordance with how individuals felt about the impact on Australia of the events listed. The analysis then uses bivariate techniques to examine how influential generations and national identification are in producing Australian collective memory. We then further interrogate the data through ordinary least squares (OLS) multiple regression analysis that combines the impacts of the generations and national identification with a series of social background experiences to test how robust age and feeling towards the nation are in the production of collective memory.

Results

Table 1 shows the results for a selection of events that respondents were asked to rank in importance relating to how they thought each event ‘shaped the nation’. The First and Second World Wars and the 9/11 terrorist attacks and 2002 Bali bombing are clearly the events attributed with the most importance. It is interesting to note that the Second World War is more prominent than the First World War, given that the latter frames Anzac Day, which revolves around the landing at Gallipoli. The First World War is still heavily prominent, though it is seen as slightly less important than the two terrorist attacks in the sample. It has been widely claimed that the 9/11 attacks were a watershed in changing western understanding of society and history. The 2002 Bali bombing, though, is close to being seen as equally significant, potentially pointing to the resonance of its national meaning for Australians and the ways in which it became interpreted and remembered within broader narratives which align it with 9/11 (Lewis, 2006; West, 2008b).

Table 1.

Events that ‘shaped Australia’ – % indicating ‘very important’.

Event	% ‘very important’	N
Second World War	46.9	2441
9/11 terrorist attacks	45.9	2465
2002 Bali bombings	43.2	2451
First World War	40.1	2399
Port Arthur massacre	26.5	2430
Great Depression	25.7	2354
Chernobyl nuclear disaster	23.4	2385
Vietnam War	22.3	2399
Gough Whitlam dismissal	18.3	2369
Catherine Freeman gold medal 2000 Olympics	13.1	2450
1983 America’s Cup victory	10.7	2433
1969 moon landing	8.4	2416
Soccer World Cup qualification over Uruguay in 2005	6.1	2432
1932–3 ‘bodyline’ Ashes series	3.1	2397

Source: AuSSA 2007 (Phillips et al., 2007).

For our purposes war and terrorism clearly represent the most important event types connected to collective memory in Australia and warrant further attention. Disasters, catastrophes and episodes of political crisis, either as they occur at a national level (the Port Arthur massacre and the Whitlam dismissal), or at the transnational level (the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and Great Depression), are of a lower level of significance than the world wars and the terrorism episodes. While these secondary events are often raised in public debate and their memory is likely to provide a guide for the interpretation of contemporary events, such as the global financial crisis, the expansion of a domestic nuclear industry and reforms to Australian gun laws, the AuSSA 2007 data suggest that they are not, in Durkheimian terms, seen as part of a sacred higher order of history that evokes awe and reverence (Alexander, 2003). The Vietnam War is also part of this secondary order list of events, demonstrating that war in itself does not inevitably translate to the sacred. The rating of the moon landing is somewhat surprising, given its prominence within popular culture, in part reflecting its role in generational myths of western Baby Boomers. Similarly, the popular connections often made between sport and Australian nationalism do not play themselves out in terms of the sample, with sport being the event type seen as least important and, as such, it will not be analysed further in this article. It is important to note, though, that the mythologizing of Australian sport traditionally uses war metaphors (McKay and Middlemiss, 1995; Rowe, 2003) and, as such, we need to be cautious about seeing event categories as mutually exclusive, rather than interconnected within broader cultural programs (Geertz, 1973).

The generational attachment to wars, disasters, catastrophes and crises in the sample is outlined in Table 2, which considers what respondents thought of as very important in terms of these events. There is a clear generational effect on the relative importance of the events, though one that differs from that typically outlined in terms of Mannheim’s theory of cohort effect. Rather than each cohort or generation attaching to particular historical events more than other generations, one that they experienced in the adolescence or early adulthood, the data show that, in absolute terms, the older the generation the greater attachment to the past no matter the era of the event (with the minor exception of the Vietnam War). The greater importance that the Silent Generation gives to the Second World War is possibly related to life-course experience of the conflict. As the Second World War was not only extensively fought in Europe but also in Australia’s Asia Pacific region, any life course experiential effect would also be seen among Australia’s migrants from nearby countries. Cohort experience though, as it has been typically interpreted, does not account for the prominence of the First World War in the data, given that only a minority of the population who experienced the war on the home front were alive when the survey was undertaken. It is significant to note that for all age cohorts except the Silent Generation, a greater importance is given to the 9/11 terrorist attack than the Second World War, though the difference is fairly marginal. Despite the impact of age, there is a clear delineation for all generational cohorts, between the world wars and terrorist events and the other events in the sample of Australian collective memory.

Table 2.

War, terrorism, and others: % considered ‘very important’ in shaping Australia by generational cohorts.

Event	Generation Y /Millennials	Generation X	Baby Boomers	Silent Generation	N
Second World War**	28.2	38.3	46.2	60.7	1146
First World War **	25.9	35.4	39.7	49.1	963
9/11 terrorist attacks**	33.8	40.1	48.4	50.3	1132
2002 Bali** bombings	32.4	35.5	44.4	50.8	1059
Great Depression**	14.1	18.1	25.1	36.6	605
Port Arthur massacre*	16.4	22.2	27.5	31.4	644
Vietnam War	16.6	19.9	24.4	22.7	535
Chernobyl nuclear disaster**	9.3	18.8	23.9	30.4	557
Gough Whitlam dismissal**	6.5	9.3	20.1	25.8	433

Source: AuSSA 2007 (Phillips et al., 2007).

p<.01=*, p <.001=**.

We turn now to consider the impact of national identity expressed as ‘closeness’ to the nation on the recall of collective memory. Table 3 communicates a clear pattern of closeness to Australia associated with affording high importance to war and terrorism in what has shaped Australia. Attributing feelings of closeness to the nation elevates the extent to which respondents feel that war and terrorism are very important to collective memory. The large variation in attitudinal responses suggests that the more strongly one feels connected to Australia, the greater attachment one has personally to national history. It is significant to note in Table 3 that those who are ‘not at all close’ to the nation give significantly higher importance to all cases of war and terrorism than those who are ‘not very close’ to the nation. While those who are ‘not at all close’ to the nation still have a much lower attachment to national history than those who are ‘very close’, the finding may give some empirical illustration of the theorizing of ‘cosmopolitan memory’. According to Levy and Sznaider (2002) cosmopolitan memory equates to the display of a high level of engagement with history by emphasizing the need to acknowledge injustice and inequalities in the past through new forms of remembering, apologies, reparations and restitution. In the Australian context politically orthodox critics of this understanding of the past have typically referred to it as a ‘black armband’ view of history (Clark, 2002).

Table 3.

Closeness to Australia by % ‘very important’ for war and terrorism.

Event	Very close	Close	Not very close	Not at all close	N
First World War*	46.4	36.3	23.2	27.6	919
Second World War*	56.5	40.6	26.6	34.5	1099
Vietnam War*	25.7	19.9	10.6	14.3	504
9/11*	53	41.7	23.5	37.9	1080
Bali bombing*	51.6	38.4	20.8	31	1016

Source: AuSSA 2007 (Phillips et al., 2007).

p<.001=*.

To further explore the ways in which the importance assigned to historical events might relate to broader levels of commitment generally, Table 4 considers specific forms of attachment to the nation and to cosmopolitan collectives such as ‘the world’, and also develops the category of the ‘unattached’. In other words, while expressing closeness, or not, to Australia might be one form of influencing collective memory, closeness or detachment from other forms of identity should be viewed as similarly important, as evidenced in studies of Australian national identity such as Phillips’s (2002) inclusive and exclusive dimensions of social trust and citizenship. Consistent with sociological thinking on globalization and identity, such as in the literature on cosmopolitanism (Skrbis and Woodward, 2013), we consider the impact of different modes of national and international belonging on collective memory. These considerations, while intimately associated with Australia, reflect the international and global reach of the events in the survey question. Closeness and detachment can be dissected along the lines of closeness to the nation and not to the world (‘Nationalists’ N = 792), closeness to the nation and to the world (‘Worldly nationalists’ N = 1273), those who are neither close to the nation nor the world (‘Unattached’ N = 150), and a smaller category of those that are close to the world but not the nation (‘Globalists’ N = 27).³ The data suggest that there is a close resemblance, but minor differences, in attributing importance between purely national identifiers and those who are worldly nationalists. Evidencing the global nature of conflict and tragedy, having a sense of closeness to the nation and the world suggests attributing a deeper sense of importance to the impact of war and terrorism on Australia than merely feeling close to the nation. Conversely, not feeling close to either Australia or the world produces markedly less significance being attributed to the role of war and terrorism in collective memory. The importance of the two world wars is diminished for those who display attachment to the world but not the nation. This group, however, considers terrorism (Bali bombing) to be important at similar levels to both kinds of nationalists, and of greater importance than the ‘unattached’.

Table 4.

Nationalisms and ‘unattachment’ by war and terrorism (%).

‘Very important’	Nationalists(N 752)	Worldly nationalists(N 1273)	UnattachedN = (150)	Globalists(N = 27)
First World War	41.1*	40.7	28.9***	23***
Second World War	46.4	50.6**	33.1***	26***
Vietnam War	21.2**	24.5***	12.7***	22.2*
Bali bombing	43.5	45.5*	24.1***	42.3***
9/11	45.2	48.6***	25.7***	34.6***

Source: AuSSA 2007 (Phillips et al., 2007).

p<.05=* p<.01=** p<.001=***.

We conclude our interrogation of the data by exploring how the attachment to historical events outlined thus far compares with a range of social background factors other than age and national identity. In theories of postmodernity, a range of variables are often thought to be responsible for historical detachment. The most prominent of these include education, ethnicity, gender, political orientation and religion (Bauman, 1992; Hunter, 1991; Vertovec, 2004). As such we suggest that these should appear as significant, as either intervening variables to the patterns identified above or as independent variables influencing levels of historical attachment and detachment. For the purpose of this analysis, the dependent variables ‘war’ and ‘terrorism’ are constructed by combining the relevant survey items into two scales (see Table A2 in Appendix A) both of which have a high level of reliability (alpha scores).

In Table 5 Model A coefficients for both war and terrorism – the first and third columns of figures – reveal marked contrasts between nationalists and the unattached for war (first column) and for terrorism (third column). There are also important contrasts between the generations, wherein the age difference is replicated for war, but generational feelings regarding terrorism are not differentiated. When controlling for a range of social background variables (columns two and four), the association between closeness to the nation and the importance of war and terrorism is confirmed. The generational effect also holds for war but is not a factor in attributing importance to terrorism with the inclusion of the social background variables. Table 5 also suggests some important mediating factors in the way in which collective memory is recalled. While for war a number of social background variables did not impact on its importance to collective memory, being born overseas – in the UK or not in the UK – did. The importance of terrorism on the other hand is associated strongly and significantly not only with the purely nationalist, but also with being female, and moderately with being religious. While the patterns presented in Table 5 empirically confirm the roles of nationalism and generations in the importance ascribed to Australia’s military involvements and the impact of terrorism in the construction of national memory, interpretation of the multivariate analysis does need some caution. Smaller R-squared values suggest that the variation explained by the model has some limitations.

Table 5.

The influence of nationalism and generations on the importance of war and terrorism, controlling for social background variables.

	Shaped Australia – war		Shaped Australia – terrorism
	Model A	Model B	Model A	Model B
	Beta	Beta	beta	beta
Worldly nationalists	.09**	.05	.08*	.07*
Globalists	−.10***	−.08*	−.145***	−.14***
Unattached	−.06*	−.07**	−.11***	−.10**
Age: Silent Generation	.02	.03	−.01	.00
Age: Generation X	−.03	−.03	−.01	.00
Age: Generation Y/ Millennials	−.07*	−.08**	−.02	−.00
Gender: female		.03		.15***
Religious		.07**		.08**
Birthplace: overseas not UK		−.18***		.00
Birthplace: UK		.09**		.00
Education: degree		−.02		−.07**
Urban		−.04		.02
Political orientation: left		−.02		−.04*
Income: high		.03		.02
Occupation: professional		−.02		−.00
Constant	15.6	16.14	11.7	11.19
R-squared	.03	.06	.03	.07
N	2335	1838	2445	1922

Source: AuSSA 2007 (Phillips et al., 2007).

p value: p < .05 = *, p < .01 = **, p < .001 = ***.

Conclusions

In the AuSSA data there is little evidence to support the assumption that there is an overwhelmingly weak connection to the past as represented in assigning importance to traditional historical events or in recognizing the historical significance of recent cultural traumas. While we identify age and commitments to the nation and the world as significant independent variables in influencing the attribution of significance to historical events, this divergence should not be over-emphasized as the data also demonstrate a high degree of consensus over the relative significance of particular historical events and the importance of event types. The survey illustrates that a large percentage of the population attributes a substantial significance to the world wars, which we take as key foundational moments in Australian history. The data also demonstrate that closeness to the nation is significantly aligned with a very strong importance being assigned to the world wars. However, it is not simply the level of attachment to the nation that the new postmodern thesis is mistaken in accounting for, but in also assuming that patriotism and cosmopolitanism are always antithetical or that they are elements in a zero-sum game. While attachment to the nation and history has been negatively associated with political orthodoxy, the data indicate that this is a more complex arrangement than the binaries of postmodern analysis would suggest. It is the case that having very strong closeness to the nation significantly increases the importance individuals assign to major historical events. However, simultaneously holding a strong closeness to the world is also significant in indicating the importance assigned to historical events. This finding is consistent with interview-based research which argues that Australian national identity frequently intertwines with postmodern and global forces, allowing for cultural traditions to remain relevant within a kind of cosmopolitan nationalism (Moran and Brett, 2011; West, 2015).

The new postmodern thesis is certainly right in proposing that global mobility and digital media are changing the ways we engage with history and that this is altering our knowledge of the past. The survey data, however, illustrate that there is still a predictable orientation to history along cohort lines, although the generational effect identified in the data differs from previous survey results in western nations that have largely confirmed Mannheim’s generational theory. Whereas other survey results have seen age cohorts identifying different events and eras as significant, AuSSA 2007 indicated a greater level of cultural consensus over what particular events and types of events are seen as important for Australia. Age is a significant factor though in determining the level of importance attached to the events considered most important, with older generations seeing the historical events listed, wars in particular, as more significant than younger generations. While this attachment to the past among older generations could be interpreted in postmodern terms as an indicator of the waning of historical affect, it can also be explained in relation to history having a greater resonance among older Australians. The multivariate analysis would suggest that while age remains an important variable in explaining the importance of warfare, it is not as overwhelmingly significant in relation to terrorism.

The multivariate analysis evidences the high level of societal importance given to the 9/11 terrorist attacks and 2002 Bali bombing. This is significant given the emphasis within the new postmodern thesis on the problematic way in which these events have thus far been remembered and commemorated. While postmodern theorists have rightly pointed out that there has been unprecedented contestation around the meanings of these terrorism events, this does not equate to the population lacking a consensus on their cultural importance. Indeed, following Kertzer it is possible to argue that interpretations of historical events is not that significant in determining social integration, with conflict about the meanings of the past itself being a ritual that functions to ‘produce solidarity in the absence of any commonality of beliefs’ (1988: 66). So while the importance assigned to the 9/11 attacks and the 2002 Bali bombing could be read as respondents confirming postmodern theorists’ belief that these events caused social fragmentation and a challenge to traditional understandings of the world, it could just as likely represent an experiential life-course effect, with these events encouraging solidarity. Durkheim, for example, might suggest that this occurs through social interactions during times of crisis becoming ‘more frequent and active’ and, as a consequence, people attained ‘more confidence, courage, and boldness in action’ (Durkheim, 1965: 241–2). While the AuSSA 2007 cannot answer the question of whether Australians see the event types of terrorism and war as part of the same cultural pattern, the data did highlight that the attribution of significance to both types of event is similar in relation to age and forms of societal commitment as evidenced in the attribution of significance to the world wars, the 9/11 terrorist attacks and 2002 Balo bombing. As such, the two types of events may not be understood as completely different historical genres. Overall, this foundational study of how ordinary Australians relate to history would benefit from longitudinal data, the benefits of which have been seen in collective memory survey-based studies undertaken in the United States (Schuman and Rogers, 2004). A longitudinal approach would, in particular, allow a mapping of how orientation to history changes for generations over time, and the relationship between attachment to the past, to the nation and to the world.

Footnotes

Appendix A

Table A2.

Scales for war and terrorism.

Items	Alpha
War
First World War, Second World War, Vietnam War	.81
Terrorism
9/11 2001, Bali bombings 2002	.88

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

Author biographies

Brad West researches broadly on national identity, ritual and collective memory. He is author of Re-enchanting Nationalisms (Springer, 2015) and the editor of War Memory and Commemoration (Routledge, 2016).

Haydn Aarons is a sociologist with interests in religion, culture, health, research methods and globalization. His work has appeared in journals such as the British Journal of Sociology and International Sociology. His recent research explores the impact of religion on cultural consumption patterns, Australian attitudes towards Asia, and Australian cultural memory. His research has also examined Buddhism in western contexts and rural health in Australia, for which he won a national award for his work on health planning with the Lower Murray Medicare Local.

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