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In The Stranger, a novel by Albert Camus, and in “Funes the Memorious,” a short story by Jorge Luis Borges, the homodiegetic narrators have a significant effect on the referential aspect of their personal experiences. Chronologically these remembered experiences are positioned before the moment when they are narrated. The act of remembering is thus a form of subsequent narration. In both texts, memory is a project rather than an object because it is recounted and not found. In the sense that it is told, memory is necessarily a creative act and thus not faultless because the story of an experience is not the experience itself. The memories in The Stranger and in “Funes the Memorious” are not reconstituted but narrated. The peculiarity of the two texts lies in the fact that the narrators take an external position when describing their own past, emphasizing the imperfect aspect of the narrators’ memory. With a narratological approach to the texts and a Sartrean interpretation of memory, I study the effects of focalization on the act of remembering. By explaining the relationship between focalization, memory and the narratee, I show that the act of remembering is not a repetition of past events or experiences but rather an inventive process that occurs always in the present. I argue that external focalization is a more authentic way to tell the story of a past experience because it emphasizes the fact that memory is always in the process of being made and therefore uncertain and incomplete even to the individual remembering.

This thesis explores practices and experiences of using photography to support remembering. While the increasing use of photography is well documented, we have limited theoretical understanding of how we approach the taking, organising, and sharing of personal images in relation to memory, and of the opportunities and risks that are created through technological change. Two studies were conducted in which a total of 21 participants were interviewed in front of a sample of their photographs. Study 1 explored photography and remembering around a single, specific event: a wedding. Study 2 explored longer-term patterns of photographic and remembering activity across a range of contexts and events. The analysis showed that the ways that participants engaged with other people and technologies were significant in determining the kinds of photographs that were produced, and the engagement with those photos. Photographic practices were also heavily influenced by the situations in which they were performed and the beliefs and preferences of individuals. The existence of photographs could lead to thinking about particular aspects of the past, but the taking of photographs also altered the experience of what was being photographed. This could be seen as disruptive, depending on the participant’s beliefs about whether photography was a legitimate part of experience. When taking photos, participants pursued a mix of aesthetics, objectivity, and personal meaning, and perceptions of these qualities could influence the way that photographs were used in cueing recall. However, while most participants had produced large collections of photographs, there had been limited engagement with these and taking or having photographs could be more important than looking at them. The thesis concludes that there is value in redefining memory as a kind of activity that emerges through the performance of remembering and that is dependent on the tools used to support it and the situations in which it is performed. From this perspective, photography and autobiographical remembering are parts of the same wider activity, an inseparable blend of internal and external processes. As such, attempts to support our memories should consider both the features of technology and the experience of using it, as well as the ways that we work with tools and people when remembering.

In Experiment one 7 Brushtail possums were trained, using food, to perform a Delayed-Matching-To-Sample procedure using still and flickering light stimuli, over a 0, 1 and 2 second delay. A criterion of 80 percent correct for 5 consecutive days was set for the requirement to probe test. Probe session delays were 0, 0.5, 1, 2, 4, and 8 seconds. Performance was analysed using the measure of discrimination log d. Log d = 1 at the possums training delay and dropped back to log d = 0 at the longer inexperienced delays. The possums performance at this task was only adequate, so in case the stimuli were causing discrimination difficulties they were changed for the following experiment to horizontal and vertical light stimuli. Experiment two used the horizontal and vertical light stimuli to further test DMTS in possums. The possum's responding stayed at 50 percent correct, or chance, so the task was changed to a Simultaneous-Choice procedure. However, this did not have any effect on improving their results with responding accuracy remaining at 50 percent correct. Experiment three involved a conditional discrimination procedure, which was implemented to find out whether the possums could in fact discriminate between a horizontal and vertical light. All the possums in this experiment reached 80 percent correct overall and at responding to either a horizontal or vertical light. These results are enough to conclude that it was not the stimuli used in the previous two experiments which that had been causing the difficulties but the task itself. It is not known exactly why the possums were so unsuccessful in performing a DMTS or MTS task. More research into DMTS in possums in greatly needed and would offer a better understanding of the results of this study.

The Oregon coast is facing the dual perils of climate change and the catastrophic Cascadia subduction zone earthquake and tsunami, yet many communities remain unprepared. Using qualitative interviews with residents of Coos Bay, Oregon, this study traces how communities facing these perils socially construct their visions of change by “remembering the future” and how this future memory influences unsettlement that, in turn, can trigger revision of strategies of action to deal with environmental risk. Participants understood these risks through three interrelated themes: analogy to familiar circumstances such as regular winter flooding, narratives of isolation and self-reliance based in collective history, and visions of symbolic preparedness. Each of these themes drew the conversation away from the material reality of environmental catastrophe, reducing relative unsettlement. Since the way that communities collectively understand environmental risk may influence preparatory action, these observations can help to explain the disjunction between knowledge of risks and response.

The delayed matching‐to‐sample (DMTS) procedure involves the insertion of a delay between the offset of a sample stimulus and the onset of an array of comparison stimuli; one of which is designated as the “correct” match for the sample on each trial. The procedure has served as the base preparation in which the effects of environmental variables on short‐term remembering and is, in many ways, responsible for a refined understanding of the phenomenon. Despite its utility, however, there are a few problems with the DMTS procedure – first, the procedure doesn’t adjust for individual differences and second, the conventional dependent measure, percent of correct trials, is not as sensitive as one might like. The titrating-delay matching to sample (TDMTS) procedure is a variant of the DMTS procedure in which the delays between sample and comparison are adjusted as a function of the subject’s performance. Stable measures of adjusted delay are not only sensitive measures of the performance of interest but they are also automatically tuned to differences across individuals. The study reported here continues our efforts to understand the dynamics of the TDMTS procedure so that it can be used to ask important questions related to short‐term remembering.

In October 2015, John Magufuli became President of Tanzania and his party (Chama cha Mapinduzi, CCM) won a large majority in parliament. This thesis explains why Tanzanians choose to vote the way they do in general and in these elections in particular. It draws on qualitative interviews with approximately one-thousand voters in four field sites: one urban and one rural area in Dodoma Region where CCM are dominant, and a second pair of urban and rural areas from Mwanza Region in which the opposition are more competitive. By using theories of social remembering to understand vote preference, this thesis investigates a number of key issues that are crucial to determining political outcomes in Tanzania: 1) CCM's track record in government; 2) The sources of information available to voters; 3) The role of money in politics; 4) CCM's attempts to discredit the opposition; 5) The progress of the opposition since political liberalisation, and; 6) Local factors, including the behaviour of candidates. Having addressed these dynamics, attention is turned to how they played out during the 2015 election. The thesis concludes that, although Magufuli had significant appeal to many voters, his victory was aided by undemocratic manipulation. This shows that the process of political transition was far from complete, even before post-election developments that have threatened basic democratic principles in Tanzania.

Through diachronic examination of communicative acts, this dissertation explores intertwined processes of social memory, remembering, forgetting and place-making that have involved the former Cook County Hospital, located in Chicago, Illinois. With emphasis on narratives, nomination practices, and social contexts, this project illuminates and examines discourse conveyed during three 'moments' of material rupture and transformation of the Cook County Hospital facilities. A central perspective of this dissertation is that discourse articulated during these 'moments' reveals social remembering and memory with regard to place-making involving the former hospital and Main Building, as well as evidences social forgetting occurring between the years 1873 to 2007. For purposes of this project, three 'moments' of material transformation are regarded as bracketed by the years 1873 through 1876, the years 1910 through 1914, and the year 2002 through a year that is, as of yet, undetermined. These 'moments' were identified through examination of articulation and recoding of labels that could be regarded more informal than official for the county hospital facilities. This project illuminates the importance and complexity of naming in place-making processes, and the necessity of diachronic approaches to exploring social remembering and forgetting relevant to place. In highlighting the fluidity of social remembering, this dissertation emphasizes value of making primary source materials accessible in public domain, for future generations. Further illuminated is the value of newsprint as channels of mass communication through which aspects of social remembering, forgetting, and place-making can be investigated. Whether to demolish or re-use the now vacant Main Building became an issue of public contestation in 2002. This project was inspired, in part, by contestation concerning the proposed demolition, by senses of the city, and by the diverse and proliferating interdisciplinary ‘corpus’ of scholarship that articulates notions of social memory, remembering, and forgetting. / text

This thesis asks whether sharing personal experiences with people from the other side of a conflict contribute to reconciliation. The reconciliatory work of four multinational women´s organizations in Bosnia-Hercegovina are examined in the light of contact theory and thinking on narrative, looking specifically at the possibilities of talking and the obstacles of a post-conflict society. Taking Trudy Govier´s writing as a starting point reconciliation is defined as a renewal of trust through forgiveness that makes long-term co-operation possible. Contact theory offers alternative circumstances where the process of reconciliation can start. Thinking on narrative brings light on the act of talking and listening and how that can influence the circumstances and the actors.15 semi-structured interviews were held with women in Bosnia-Hercegovina. Seven of them were organizers, eight of them participants. The questions were formulated and the transcribed interviews were analyzed with the help of five themes: talking, change, co-operation, trust, future and reconciliation.This thesis comes to the conclusion that reconciliation has to be seen as both an individual and a societal issue. It is a personal experience, but it cannot be separated from the society the person lives in. Talking can bring two people from different sides of a conflict together but the future and possibilities of their relationship is tightly bound to events in their community, the views of people around them and the general atmosphere of their surrounding environment. The concept of reconciliation is full of contradictions that reflect the complexities in a post-conflict society. The contradictions are both practical and emotional, lived and felt. In all its’ contradictions, reconciliation is about bridging gaps. After a war there is a gap between people who have lost faith in each other. There is also a gap between the past and the present, a gap left by all that was lost in the conflict. There is a gap between the individual and the society that betrayed her by ceasing to be a society and becoming chaos. All these gaps have to be traversed. A story told in earnest and listened to in the same spirit binds a tightrope over the gap for storyteller and listener. But there is a whole lot else besides that influencing the success of the tightrope walkers.

Recalling the past – the cultural act of remembering – is crucially important for the formation of cities, their identity, and that of their inhabitants. It is an urban practice that involves a process of narrating and scrutinizing history and making it present in urban spaces. Remembering history is a form of participation and activism, which can be seen to revive the past, generate and shape public life, criticize historical constructs and misconceptions, and negotiate new ideas and identities. As part of a panel at the conference „Urbane Praxis. Neue für kulturelle Infrastrukturen“ [Urban praxis. New contexts for cultural infrastructures] we talked to four scholars and/or curators – Marie-Charlott Schube, Pablo Santacana López, Julia Kurz und Marianna Liosi – about their perspectives on remembering via the negotiation processes occurring in urban spaces.