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Negotiating the past: some issues of transmission of memories among Estonian young people
[journal article]
Abstract
All across Europe, the past has always played a signifi cant role in youth activism and continues to do so, though in different countries the extent of this role may vary. This particular article deals with the question of how the issues of the past resonate in the lives of young people in Estonia. ... view more
All across Europe, the past has always played a signifi cant role in youth activism and continues to do so, though in different countries the extent of this role may vary. This particular article deals with the question of how the issues of the past resonate in the lives of young people in Estonia. During recent decades, the tensions between hegemonic and alternative pasts have been a source of discursive as well as physical combats among the different socio-cultural groups in Estonia and are often loaded with a political and ideological burden. In 2007, these different understandings peaked with street riots, mostly dominated by young people. Thus, understanding the mechanisms of how young people make sense of the complicated past can tell us also a lot about the reasons behind their political activism (or lack thereof). The article is especially keen on exploring the questions of mechanisms of transmission of memory - how the past is socialised in different contexts (schools, museums, home), and how diffi cult pasts are dealt with and negotiated in groups of different ethnic and cultural background. By doing so, it will contribute to the theoretical discussions on relations of hegemonic past and communicative memory, how in different cultural contexts the hegemonic past is moulded or contested. It will be argued that young people actively contextualise and rework the matters of the complicated past in their everyday contexts. Neither hegemonic discourse nor the communicative past is absorbed without questions but constantly negotiated. The dataset of this article consists of in-depth individual (84) and group interviews (5) predominantly with young people, but also other meaningful adults in the youngsters' lives: their parents and grandparents, teachers and the like. In addition, participant observations are used as background data. The sample involves both ethnic Estonians and Russian-speaking minorities.... view less
Keywords
multicultural society; Estonia; communication; socialization; memory; historical development; influence; youth
Classification
Political Process, Elections, Political Sociology, Political Culture
Sociology of the Youth, Sociology of Childhood
Free Keywords
transmission of memory; communicative memory; socialisation of the past; multicultural society
Document language
English
Publication Year
2016
Page/Pages
p. 13-30
Journal
Studies of Transition States and Societies, 8 (2016) 2
ISSN
1736-8758
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed