Abstract
This article contributes to discussions surrounding the development of 'analytical tools' sensitive to the fluid nature of collective memory and all its 'varieties, contradictions, and dynamism' (Olick, 2008: 159). It explores the methodological challenges of investigating how young people in New Zealand and the United Kingdom negotiate processes and practices of war remembrance and how, as researchers, we can begin to decipher the diverse responses young people have in recalling and making sense of their society's violent past. Examples from earlier research projects in the UK and New Zealand, led by each co-author, are used to problematize the methodological challenges in our respective projects with the aim to encourage discussion around developing youth-centred, inclusive and participatory methodologies that unpack the cultural memories of war and situate young people's voices prominently in the research process.
Highlights
In his seminal essay, ‘From collective memory to the sociology of mnemonic practices and products’, sociologist Jeffrey K
This article contributes to the development of such ‘analytical tools’ by exploring the methodological challenges of investigating how young people in New Zealand and the United Kingdom negotiate processes and practices of war remembrance and how, as researchers, we can begin to decipher the diverse responses young people have in recalling and making sense of their society’s violent past
We explore how several different research methodologies can be used to investigate the phenomenon of youth engagement in First World War commemoration
Summary
In his seminal essay, ‘From collective memory to the sociology of mnemonic practices and products’, sociologist Jeffrey K. This method perhaps provided the greatest degree of access to thinking about questions of what meaning young people make of war remembrance It should be qualified by an acknowledgement that students were being observed in unfamiliar, highly ritualized and quasi-sacred environments, within the context of a formal government-funded trip that participants knew they were lucky to be on. The key benefit of this aspect of the research methodology was witnessing ‘in the moment’ responses to interactions with the sites, people and objects that the students encountered on the tours These snatches, glimpses and insights of conversation and behaviour are impossible to recapture in a survey or focus group, and they reveal a great deal about the complex ways young people interact with the cultural memory of modern war. As with other empirical research into emotions and battlefield tourism, contradictory feelings – whether nationalist pride, sadness for lost combatants on all sides, disbelief at the senselessness of war, or a desire for peace – were felt all at once, sometimes by the same individual (McKay, 2013; Osbaldiston and Petray, 2011)
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