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The Engine's in the Front, But its Heart's in the Same Place: Advertising, Nostalgia, and the Construction of Commodities as Realms of Memory
Author(s) -
MEYERS OREN
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
the journal of popular culture
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.238
H-Index - 24
eISSN - 1540-5931
pISSN - 0022-3840
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-5931.2009.00705.x
Subject(s) - front (military) , citation , advertising , sociology , history , computer science , library science , engineering , business , mechanical engineering
NE OF THE ESSENTIAL DIFFERENCES OF OPINION AMONG RESEARCHERS of collective memory regards the question of construction versus selection in the process of shaping social recollections. One approach can be traced back to the writings of the field's founder, Maurice Halbwachs, who contended that the process of creating col- lective memories is an absolute one: the need to reconstruct the past and the social group's ability to utilize it are so great that the actual origins of past events are of secondary importance. That is, the factual past has only limited significance in the process of shaping collective memories so that they will suit current needs (46 - 51). In contrast, according to Barry Schwartz (395 - 96), the main activity conducted in the process of creating collective memories is not construction, but rather selection. The past is not flexible in a way that enables us to create, or even invent, historic facts, and thus social memories change mainly via the process by which some events are emphasized and others are concealed. We choose factual elements that fit our larger master- narratives, and ignore or minimize the importance of others. A valuable insight on the construction-selection debate can be found in a study published in Psychology & Marketing (Braun, Ellis & Loftus). During a multiphase experiment, students were first shown fake Disney ads containing a first-person nostalgic recollection of a child- hood visit to Disney World during which the excited writer (then a