Contemporary Trends in War Commemoration: the UK and Russia
The ‘Era of Commemoration’ has begun in Western European countries in the 1980s (Nora 1998) and spilled over to the rest of the world after the end of the Cold War (Huyssen 2000). The popularity of commemoration as a whole has embraced wars and conflicts that marked off by exceptional public interest and involvement (Ashplant, Dawson and Poper 2000). The PhD project examines contemporary war commemoration in two countries: the UK and Russia. The research aim is to compare representations, meanings and practices of war commemoration, developed in distinct political, social and cultural contexts.
The project is particularly focused on the period after the end of the Cold War. This time is characterized by a series of fundamental changes of the mass media, states, civil societies, and security agenda across the world. Both examined countries have a long tradition of war remembrance. This tradition is challenged by current political and social changes. A long-running engagement of British armed forces in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan makes war commemoration an important agenda in the UK. Ongoing and "ceased" conflicts within the boundaries of the former Soviet Union provides a demand for war commemoration in Russia. Though war commemoration is a notable phenomenon in both cases it is a relatively underexplored social institute. The research addresses war commemoration as a cultural phenomenon, mediated through the popular culture (the mass media and films), war monuments and museums and annual ceremonies. This project will thereby not only fill the existing lacuna in the empirical study of contemporary war commemoration in both cases, but will also provide extensive qualitative data about the features and dilemmas of contemporary war commemoration in postmodern society.
The project relies on extensive range of data such as media coverage, a wide range of documents on memorials, museums, etc, ethnographic observations of ceremonies, interviews, data of public opinion surveys and materials on initiatives related to war remembrance.
Research Supervisors
Dr Bettina Renz and Dr Alex Danchev
ORS Award and University of Nottingham Scholarship
The Centre for British Politics
Civil-military relations, military culture (war memorials, films, ceremonies), reintegration of veterans and ex-combatants, social policy aimed at socially vulnerable groups.
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