Troubled Pasts: History Matters

'History Matters' is a project that seeks to illuminate how regional conflicts in Europe are remembered and enacted today, particularly in border areas, but also in other regions with a troubled past. These conflict memories may be formal (officially observed, celebrated or commemorated) or informal (embedded in narratives or deep stories, or in assumptions constructed about everyday realities, fellow citizens or foreigners). They may provide possibilities for both current reconciliation and future conflict. The History Matters project seeks to understand the relationship between the construction of, a) historical memories, b) present day accounts about national identity and otherness, and c) present day conflicts and crisis. The project will relate these issues to the development and status of the European integration project. The History Matters Project is an interdisciplinary project that has a conceptual framework which is drawn from the disciplines of History and Sociology. Historically, it draws on literature around the proliferation and contestation of historical memories in states across the world (e.g., Olick, 2007; Assmann, 2006). Sociologically, it draws on a literature that stresses the significance and importance that deep stories have towards the individual and social identities, and the potential of humans to respond creatively, critically and reflexively to these stories as a means for developing social trust and cohesion (Hochschild, 1975, 2003, 2016; Putnam, 1996, 2000; Elias 1956, 1978, 1982; and Elias & Scotson 1965). This conceptual framework is, in short, focused on social networks (figurations), social agents and their potential for creative and dynamic responses to the historical memories embedded in deep stories. It is therefore also consistent with the applied aspects of the project in the field of education. Central to the project design is a concept of pedagogy and a hypothesis, that the forms and narratives in which societies reconstruct their past can either promote or nullify the building of trust and reconciliation in sites of former conflict.