This project supports the ethnographic research of a graduate student from Harvard University in a rural area of China. The student will interview community members about their notions of history. The focus will not be on the accuracy of popular memory, but rather on the social processes that select and create memory out of the available material. Using participant observation and in depth interviews the student (a Chinese native fluent in the local language) will systematically collect images and knowledge of the distant and recent past, analyzing how individual rationalizations of past behavior have a moral and social basis. The local community is an apt place to do the research since it was relocated in 1958, and thus has a specific event of collective suffering to deal with. This research is important because local communities have long memories which are often used to justify current action. Understanding of the social processes which shape these memories can help us understand and deal with current political and social behavior in similar villages.
