Moving Memories and Memories of Moves: Some Afterthoughts

Abstract

The epilog treats the relationship between movement, memory work and place through three cross-cutting themes in the book’s wide-ranging ethnographic chapters: 1) the significance of the social contexts in which memory work takes place and is seen to gain meaning (national, transnational or local communities, family relations or individual lives); 2) the temporal span of memory work (recent history, life times, generations or distant pasts), and 3) the nature of the mobility highlighted in memory work (e.g. routine movements of a past mundane life, key moves associated with different life stages, or foundational moves defining a particular national or diasporic community). The often conspicuous collective celebrations of cultural/historical sites associated with particular national or ethnic identities have often been at the center of attention in anthropology. However, individuals’ more intimate remembering and reliving of everyday life in a different place associated with their past may be equally worthy of attention. Furthermore, the complex, and often tensive, relationship between these two disparate sources and expressions of belonging and identification may offer a fruitful point of departure for further studies of movement, memory work and place.