Contemporary Auschwitz/Owicim

Based on fieldwork in the contemporary Polish town of Oswiecim - Auschwitz in German - and drawing on interactionist thought, this book presents an innovative theoretical and empirical approach to the present attribution of meaning to the past, thus shedding light on the manner in which residents remember and narrate the past of their town.

This book presents an innovative theoretical and empirical approach to the present attributions of meaning to the past. Based on the author's fieldwork in the contemporary Polish town of Oswiecim - Auschwitz, in German - it observes the manner in which residents remember and narrate the past of their town, drawing on theoretical perspectives from the work of figures such as George Herbert Mead and Erving Goffman. With attention to narratives concerning pre-war Catholic-Jewish coexistence, wartime Nazi occupation, the Holocaust and post-war Communist Poland, the author explores the complementary, fluid and contradictory nature of meaning-making processes in various contemporary interactional contexts, both online and offline. As such, it will appeal to social scientists with interests in memory studies, the Holocaust and interactional sociology.

Autorentext

Thomas Van de Putte is a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Sociology and Social Research at the University of Trento, Italy.

Inhalt

1. Introduction: A Synchronic, Interactional Approach to Collective Memory 2. A Critique of Memory Studies' Epistemologie s 3. Collective Memory and the Self: Towards an Epistemology of 'Dividuals' 4. Interactional Memory Methods 5. The Politization of Auschwitz/Owicim since 1944: Memory Politics in Poland and Beyond 6. Including or Excluding Jews? An Analysis of Context-Dependent Othering in Auschwitz/Owicim 7. Ethnifying Agency: Inhabitants of Auschwitz/Owicim Narrating 19391945 8. Renegotiating Auschwitz: Attribution of Meaning to Spatial Realms in Auschwitz/Owicim 9. Conclusion