“Ordinary” conceptions and “vernacular” vocabulary in the mediation of history

Most case-studies analyzing the relationship to the past are grounded in a qualitative or ethnographic approach with clearly identified institutions (political party, family, school…) and inscribed in a period of time, or, inversely, punctual interactional situations with heritage institutions (museums, memorials, historical productions). They have taken as their principal variable transmission: inter-generational, top-down, or from those in the know to those who do not.
Breaking from these exclusive approaches, this research project wishes to reintegrate the analysis of the mediation of history and of processes of evoking the past with classic sociological questionings. Class membership, religious beliefs, migratory and social trajectories, education level, gender, mobilization context, etc. are thus tackled in this study. The objective is to question the mediation of history prior to the confrontation of collections and outside the interaction with heritage institutions. These works can also be put into perspective with reception studies of collections developed in the framework of the cluster, to measure the specificity of the mediation of history that plays in the interactions between individuals, collections, and heritage institutions.

Project Leader

Marie-Claire LAVABRE , Director of the ISP , ISP

Internal cluster partners

• Institute for Social Sciences of Politics (ISP) - UMR 7220
• La contemporaine | library, archives, museum of contemporary societies
• Laboratory of Ethnology and Comparative Sociology (LESC) - UMR 7186

Associated partners

Hanyang University, Seoul
http://www.hanyang.ac.kr/web/eng

Duration