Collective Memory and Nonpublic Opinion

A Historical Note on a Methodological Controversy About a Political Problem

Bibliographic Data

ID11354108
AuthorsJeffrey K Olick (University of Virginia, corresponding author)
Year2007
Volume30
Issue1
Pages41-55
Publication date2007-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSymbolic Interaction (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0195-6086 • E-ISSN: 1533-8665
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1525/si.2007.30.1.41
OpenAlexW2166102528
LanguageEN
Citations received12
References cited36

This article describes a little‐known moment in the history of social research, the so‐called Group Experiment (Gruppenexperiment) conducted in Germany in 1950–51 by members of the reconstituted Frankfurt school. That research, I argue, provides a missing link in the history of the ideas of deliberative democracy and public discourse, areas of political theory in which the substantive legacies of pragmatism and interactionism are particularly significant. Most important, however, the Gruppenexperiment provides a model for rethinking certain methodological and conceptual problems plaguing contemporary research on collective memory, namely, the tendency to reify it

Collective memory · Democracy · Epistemology · Political science · Politics · Pragmatism · Public opinion · Social science · Sociology · Symbolic interactionism · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Law · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Philosophy · Social and Cultural Dynamics

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