Remembering Social Movements: Activism and Memory

335 Pages·2021·6.878 MB·English

by  Stefan Berger, Sean Scalmer, Christian Wicke

REMEMBERING SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
Remembering Social Movements ofers a comparative historical examination of the relations
between social movements and collective memory.
A detailed historiographical and theoretical review of the feld introduces the reader
to fve key concepts to help guide analysis: repertoires of contention, historical events,
generations, collective identities, and emotions. The book examines how social move-
ments act to shape public memory as well as how memory plays an important role within
social movements through 15 historical case studies, spanning labour, feminist, peace,
anti-nuclear, and urban movements, as well as specifc examples of ‘memory activism’
from the 19th century to the 21st century. These include transnational and explicitly
comparative case studies, in addition to cases rooted in German, Australian, Indian, and
American history, ensuring that the reader gains a real insight into the remembrance of
social activism across the globe and in diferent contexts. The book concludes with an
epilogue from a prominent Memory Studies scholar.
Bringing together the previously disparate felds of Memory Studies and Social Movement
Studies, this book systematically scrutinises the two-way relationship between memory and
activism and uses case studies to ground students while ofering analytical tools for the reader.
Stefan Berger is Professor of Social History and Director of the Institute for Social
Movements at Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany. He is also executive chair of the
Foundation History of the Ruhr, and an honorary professor at Cardif University in the
UK. His books on social movements include (with Holger Nehring) The History of Social
Movement in Global Perspective (2017).
Sean Scalmer is Professor of History at the University of Melbourne, Australia. His
books on social movements and politics include Dissent Events (2002), Activist Wisdom
(2006), Gandhi in the West (2011), On the Stump (2017), and Democratic Adventurer (2020).
Christian Wicke is Assistant Professor of Political History at Utrecht University, the
Netherlands. He wrote Helmut Kohl’s Quest for Normality (2015). He recently edited (with
Ulf Teichmann) an issue of Arbeit-Bewegung-Geschichte on the relationship between ‘old’
and ‘new’ social movements (2018/III).
Remembering the Modern World
Series Editors: David Lowe and Tony Joel
The Remembering the Modern World series throws new light on the major themes
in the feld of history and memory in a global context. The series investigates
relationships between state-centred practices and other forms of collective and
individual memory; looks at the phenomenon of anniversaries and national days
in the context of global and national identities; shows how some cities and sites
play active roles in generating acts of remembrance and asks why some phenom-
ena and events are remembered more widely and easily than others.
Titles in the series:
Remembering the Second World War
Edited by Patrick Finney
Remembering Independence
Carola Lentz and David Lowe
Remembering the Holocaust in Educational Settings
Edited by Andy Pearce
Remembering Women’s Activism
Sharon Crozier-De Rosa and Vera Mackie
Remembering Asia’s World War Two
Edited by Mark R. Frost, Daniel Schumacher and Edward Vickers
Remembering Social Movements
Activism and Memory
Edited by Stefan Berger, Sean Scalmer and Christian Wicke
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/
Remembering-the-Modern-World/book-series/RMW11
REMEMBERING SOCIAL
MOVEMENTS
Activism and Memory
Edited by
Stefan Berger, Sean Scalmer
and Christian Wicke
First published 2021
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2021 selection and editorial matter, Stefan Berger, Sean Scalmer and
Christian Wicke; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Stefan Berger, Sean Scalmer and Christian Wicke to be
identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for
their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections
77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other
means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Berger, Stefan, editor. | Scalmer, Sean, editor. |
Wicke, Christian, editor.
Title: Remembering activism : social movements and memory /
edited by Stefan Berger, Sean Scalmer and Christian Wicke.
Subjects: LCSH: Social movements—Historiography. |
Social movements—Case studies. | Protest movements—Case studies. |
Collective memory—Political aspects.
Classification: LCC HM881 .R45 2021 (print) |
LCC HM881 (ebook) | DDC 303.48/4—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020057618
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020057619
ISBN: 978-0-367-54156-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-54155-2 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-08783-0 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by codeMantra
CONTENTS
List of figures vii
List of contributors ix
1 Memory and social movements: an introduction 1
Stefan Berger, Sean Scalmer and Christian Wicke
2 The ascension of ‘comfort women’ in South Korean
colonial memory 26
Lauren Richardson
3 The past in the present: memory and Indian women’s
politics 41
Devleena Ghosh and Heather Goodall
4 History as strategy: imagining universal feminism in
the women’s movement 60
Sophie van den Elzen and Berteke Waaldijk
5 ‘The memory of history as a leitmotif for nonviolent
resistance’ – peaceful protests against nuclear missiles
in Mutlangen, 1983–7 83
Richard Rohrmoser
6 Atomic testing in Australia: memories, mobilizations
and mistrust 95
David Lowe
vi Contents
7 ‘The FBI Stole My Fiddle’: song and memory in US
radical environmentalism, 1980–95 113
Iain McIntyre
8 Memory ‘within’, ‘of’ and ‘by’ urban movements 133
Christian Wicke
9 Memory as a strategy? – dealing with the past in
political proceedings against communists in 1950/60s
West Germany 156
Sarah Langwald
10 ‘We believe to have good reason to regard these
comrades, who died in March, to be ours.’ The
remembrance of the Märzgefallenen by workers’
organizations during the Weimar Republic 180
Jule Ehms
11 Memory as political intervention: labor movement
life narration in Australia, Jack Holloway and
May Brodney 199
Liam Byrne
12 Remembering the movement for eight hours:
commemoration and mobilization in Australia 219
Sean Scalmer
13 The memory of trade unionism in Germany 240
Stefan Berger
14 Protest cycles and contentious moments in memory
activism: insights from postwar Germany 260
Jenny Wüstenberg
15 Social movements, white and black: memory struggles
in the United States South since the Civil War 280
W. Fitzhugh Brundage
16 Afterword: the multiple entanglements of memory
and activism 299
Ann Rigney
Index 305
FIGURES
8.1 Juanita Nielsen community centre 148
8.2 Kelly’s Bush, Green Bans memorial plaque 149
8.3 1979 mural by activist artists Merilyn Fairskye and Michiel
Dolk and the Woolloomooloo residents action group 150
8.4 Jack Mundey at Miller’s Point 151
13.1 Silke Wagner: Glückauf. bergarbeiterproteste im ruhrgebiet 254
14.1 Heimkehrermahnmal in Friedland near Göttingen: ‘Memorial
built by the federation of homecomers, POWs and Relatives of
the missing 1967’ 263
14.2 Members of the Marburg History workshop next to the
Marburger Jäger regiment during a commemorative ceremony 266
14.3 Center for Human Rights Memory in Cottbus, staged to
show how guards humiliated prisoners by rifling through their
belongings in their cells 269

CONTRIBUTORS
Stefan Berger  is Full Professor of Social History and Director of the Institute
for Social Movements at Ruhr-Universität Bochum. He is also Executive Chair
of the Foundation History of the Ruhr, and an Honorary Professor at Cardif
University in the UK. He has worked on social movements, nationalism, mem-
ory, industrial heritage, deindustrialization, and the history of historiography,
and is currently fnishing a monograph on historical writing since the 1980s. He
is the author of The Past as History. National Identity and Historical Consciousness in
Modern Europe (2015) and editor (with Jef Olick) of a six-volume Cultural History
of Memory (2020), as well as editor (with Holger Nehring) of The History of Social
Movements: A Global Perspective (2017).
Liam Byrne  was awarded his PhD by the University of Melbourne in 2017. In
2018 he began work with the Australian Council of Trade Unions, and in 2019
was appointed as its Historian.
Jule Ehms  is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Social Movements (Bo-
chum), working on syndicalist union work during the Weimar Republic.
She studied philosophy and history at the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle/
Wittenberg and the University of Notre Dame. Furthermore, she is interested
in history of knowledge, political theory and Marxism, and history of social
movements.
W. Fitzhugh Brundage  has been the William B. Umstead Professor of History
at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill since 2002. He has written on
lynching, socialism, historical memory, African American popular culture, and
the history of torture in the United States. He is currently completing a book on
prisoner of war camps during the American Civil War.