[TimorLesteStudies] New Article: Representing World History in the 21st Century: The Impact of 9/11, the Iraq War, and the Nation-State on Dynamics of Collective Remembering.

[Bu Wilson]

James H. Liu, Dario Paez, Patrycja Slawuta, Rosa Cabecinhas, Elza Techio,
Dogan Kokdemir,Ragini Sen, Orsolya Vincze, Hamdi Muluk, Feixue Wang and Anya
Zlobina. 2009. Representing World History in the 21st Century: The Impact of
9/11, the Iraq War,and the Nation-State on Dynamics of Collective
Remembering. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 40; 667

Following open-ended methodology used in an earlier research by Liu et al.,
social representations
of world history were assessed among university student samples in 12
countries: China,
India, Russia, Brazil, Indonesia, East Timor, Turkey, Poland, Hungary,
Ukraine, Spain, and
Portugal. Findings confirmed that across cultures, transcending boundaries
of political ideology,
civilization age, or youthful statehood. (a) World history is represented as
a story about
politics and warfare, with World War II the most important event in history
and Hitler its most influential individual. (b) Recency effects are
pervasive in young adults' collective remembering,
with events and figures from the past 100 years accounting for 72% and 78%
of nominations
on average. (c) Representations were primarily Eurocentric, with events and
figures in
Western societies accounting for 40% of nominations overall, but this is
tempered by nationalism,
especially in the prevalence of local heroes instrumental to the founding of
the current
state. The representational hegemony of the victorious Western powers of
World War II is
being challenged by negative evaluations of the American presidency
following 9/11
(September 9) and the Iraq War, with George Bush Jr. perceived as more
negative than Hitler
in four out of six samples where they were both nominated as important.
Results are interpreted
within a theoretical framework of history and identity, where collective
remembering
of the past is dynamically interlinked to political issues of the present.
Keywords: group processes; intergroup relations/prejudice; national
development; ethnic
identity

The online version of this article can be found at:
http://jcc.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/40/4/667

Bu Wilson
Regulatory  Institutions Network (RegNet) Research School of Pacific and
Asian Studies College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National
University 
Canberra   ACT   0200 
AUSTRALIA 

T: 02 6125 5813
F: 02 6125 1507
M: 0407 087 086
E: Bu.Wilson at anu.edu.au



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