Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity.

In this volume, leading historians, anthropologists and ethnographers explore the relationship between collective memory and national identity in diverse cultures throughout history. Placing commemorations in their historical settings, the contributors disclose the contested nature of these monuments by showing how groups and individuals struggle to shape the past to their own ends. The volume is introduced by John Gillis's broad overview of the development of public memory in relation to the history of the nation-state. Other contributions address the usefulness of identity as a cross-cultural concept, the connection between identity, heritage, and history, national memory in early modern England, commemoration in Cleveland, the museum and the politics of social control in modern Iraq and many other issues.