The works of Maurice Halbwachs focus on two main lines of research. Firstly, the study of social classes, in particular the working class (consumption, housing, life styles, etc.), and secondly the study of memory in a program of collective psychology.

In 1925, in Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire (The social frameworks of memory), the sociologist sets out the general ambition of his work, which consists in defining individual memory on the basis of its social dimensions: "If we were to examine the way in which we remember, we would recognize that most of our memories come back to us when our family, our friends, or other people recall them to us [...] it is in society that man acquires his memories, that he recalls them, that he recognizes them, and that he locates them. [...] I do not need to seek out where the memories are, where they are kept, in my brain, or in some corner of my mind to which only I would have access, because they are recalled to me from outside, and because the groups to which I belong continuously offer me the means to reconstruct them."

Halbwachs thus disputes the approach according to which the operation of the memory would be developed solely on the basis of the operation of the individual psychology. His analysis of the social bases of memory is deployed on three levels: family, social classes, and whole societies.

The social construction of individual memory

Halbwachs wanted to demonstrate to the psychologists of his time that the past is not really kept in individual memory, and it cannot be relived as such; in the memory, only "fragments" and "images" remain. It is the collective representations that constitute them on the basis of the necessities of the present. If we refer, for example, to the psychologist Charles Blondel, he tells that, as a child, he fell in a water hole, and risked drowning; he considers this memory to be personal. But Halbwachs retorts that this memory is personal only in appearance: if, as a child, he was so afraid, it was because a family was waiting for him at home. He saw himself disappear and cause them much grief, or saw himself punished. Halbwachs asserts that if he has kept this memory, it is because today, he is still the child of his parents. Therefore a "pure" memory or recollection does not exist. Halbwachs adds that "thought precedes the evocation of memories," and so there is no memory without intelligence, i.e. without making the consciousness work. And the social frameworks of memory are precisely "the instruments" that the conscious individual uses to recompose an image of the past, in tune with the necessities of the individual's present, thus providing the individual with his or her existential harmony and thus with his or her identity.

The development of collective memory in intermediate groups

Halbwachs developed in particular the example of the family and that of social classes; let us examine them. A family is not only a gathering of individuals having common feelings and family ties. Each family reproduces "rules and customs that do not depend on us, and that existed before us, which set our place." Whether or not they are aware of it, a husband and wife have conceptions of what their roles should be, between themselves and with respect to their children, these conceptions not depending only on their personal ideas. They inherit a "general conception of the family," and a certain number of representations of what a family should be. The issue of bringing up children, in particular, logically focuses on these implicit norms. The family then structures the memory of children through the roles that were theirs in the events experienced in common; even as adults, they continue to play these roles in the eyes of their parents. This community of life has a memory. Without it, the memories would have disappeared.

In l'Esquisse d'une psychologie des classes sociales [essay on a psychology of social classes] (1938), Halbwachs compares the collective mentalities of peasants and of workers. He shows that workers construct their group memory around memories that corroborate them in their feeling of not taking part in the collective life, and even of being constantly kept apart from it. In the factories or the mines, they execute, but they do not command. They supply labor but they do not play any role in economic decisions, in price fixing, etc. For their part, peasants are also conscious of being set aside from modern life where everything is decided in town. However, they perceive themselves to be the representatives of a legitimate tradition. This representation determines their attachment to the land, to their homes, and to their villages. They are also very religious, assiduously attending their churches and maintaining their tombs. In this way, they keep alive the memory of those that preceded them on their land, which corroborates them in their feeling of their world being unchanging like any eternal and authentic value.

Collective memory on the scale of whole societies and civilizations

Halbwachs then transposes the above reasoning to society as a whole. It can be considered that it is the physical form of the group that reflects and also models the concerns of each of its members. What Halbwachs calls the "physical form" of the group designates the way in which the population uses the land, e.g. the subdivision of a town into neighborhoods that correspond to different social classes or to different economic activities. He considers that this form structures the most essential representations that the group has of itself, and in particular the collective memories (e.g. the uprising of a poor neighborhood, the disappearance of a traditional market, etc.). On another scale, Halbwachs applied this reasoning to the history of Christian Civilization (La topographie légendaire des évangiles, 1941). Firstly, he shows how religious beliefs are based on a history whose essential events are materialized in very particular places (e.g. the Sea of Galilee, Mount Zion, etc.). Finally, he explains how the re-settlement of these religious sites as a function of the issues of the present transforms memory and, at the same time, guarantees its continued existence.

Laurent Mucchielli
Chargé de recherche au CNRS
CNRS - CESDIP
Tel. : +33 1 34 52 1 .00
E-mail : mucchiel@idf.ext.jussieu.fr

Laurent Mucchielli, a specialist in the history of humanities is also director and chief editor of the Journal Revue d’histoire des sciences humaines*.
* Presses Universitaires du Septentrion
Tel. : +33 3 20 41 66 80
E-mail : septentrion@ septentrion.com

 

 

Bibliography

Laurent Mucchielli
Selection on the theme of memory

MARCEL J.-C., MUCCHIELLI L., 1999, Au fondement du lien social : la mémoire collective selon Maurice Halbwachs, Technologies, idéologies, pratiques. Revue d'anthropologie des connaissances, 13 (2), p. 63-88.
MUCCHIELLI L., 1999, Pour une psychologie collective : l'héritage durkheimien d'Halbwachs et sa rivalité avec Blondel durant l'entre-deux-guerres, Revue d'histoire des sciences humaines, 1, p. 101-138.