Social Memory in North East Africa

Paper Summary:

This paper looks at the production of social memory, using case studies from NE Africa. It seeks to examine the process through which social memory is created and the uses to which it is put. It traces the differences between narratives and historical tradition as embodied both in ritual and in objects and argues that one can discern a difference between the sense of history embodied in oral narrative, which can often shift quickly in response to the demands of the present and the sense of history present in habitus.

Outline
Memories, Spoken and Silent
Speaking History
Silent Memories
Practice

From the Paper:

"To understand the myriad of uses people have for social memory, it is perhaps wise to consider the uses that anthropologists have put such social memory to in the past. Cunnison (1971), in his analysis of the problematic genealogy of the Baqqara belt, notes that one of the foremost tools of the anthropologist has been the construction of genealogical lists. These oral histories have enabled anthropologists to construct historical continuities and group categories. However, these lists best reflect the local political organisation. As groups move away, and strangers are incorporated, oral genealogies change to reflect the demands of the present. That is to say, while these lists are indeed useful, they are useful not in establishing categorical group lines that reassert a sense of timeless boundary, but in understanding the contemporary social being of truth - the requirements of organisation and politics at the time the oral genealogy is taken."

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