mohammadmahdi Farzbod; Heidar Janalizadeh Choobbasti
Abstract
The generational memory ofthe Iran-Iraq war is meant to be the memory shared by those whose collectiveexperience of war has shaped their views in the same period of history. Thefundamental fact of generational memory is that different generations interpretand remember past events in varied ways. Thus, ...
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The generational memory ofthe Iran-Iraq war is meant to be the memory shared by those whose collectiveexperience of war has shaped their views in the same period of history. Thefundamental fact of generational memory is that different generations interpretand remember past events in varied ways. Thus, the incident as effective as theIran-Iraq war can act as a focal point in the reproduction of collectiverepresentations of the past, and in the present conditions of the society canconfigure the mentality of the generation around the understanding and commonsense of war. For a conceptualization of generational memory of war, after anoverview of individualistic and collectivist models of collective memory andthe expression of deficiency in their methodological strategies, a new model ofcognitive sociology was used to examine the mechanisms of generational memory’sproduction. In this model, collective memory as a knowledge structures and inthe form of memory schemata which exists at a supra-individual level of sociallife, is cognitive by-product of the social interaction of culturally relatedindividuals with each other amongcultural objects. The dominant methodology of research has been qualitativemethod, the technique of deep and semi-structured interview has been used fordata collection, and the method of thematic analysis was used for dataanalysis. The application of the analysis method allowed us to obtain atypology of common knowledge structures that individuals in each groupgeneration can use to understand the meaning of events and phenomena associatedwith warfare. These common knowledge structures, as generational memoryschemata of the war indicate that how two generations with autobiographical andhistorical memories of war represent the Iran-Iraq war.
