Local memory, intergenerational transmission and construction of collective identities in small contemporary cities

Abstract

This demonstration article examines the intergenerational transmission of local memory from a sociological reading centered on small cities faced with the transformation of their activities and landscapes. The article seeks to understand how older residents, young people, heritage associations, teachers and elected officials organize family narratives, archives collection, site visits and photo sharing, while their conduct is traversed by fidelity to the past and the need to make this past habitable to the present. The approach is based on a fully simulated qualitative corpus, built solely to test the editorial layout of the journal; it combines fictional interviews, observation scenes and imaginary institutional documents. The analysis highlights the role of memories, objects, places, archives and narrative skills, as well as the effect of differences in visibility between groups, neighbourhoods, trades and generations. It shows that these practices cannot be reduced to individual decisions: they also depend on the rules, relationships and meanings produced in the action. The illustrative results point to a renewed local affiliation but crossed by silences and disagreements. They invite us to consider a pluralistic memorial policy that combines collection, debate and public access to the traces. The article concludes that the study of ordinary arrangements makes it possible to better grasp the boundary between lived memory, transmitted narrative and heritage staging. The text has no empirical pretension and is exclusively a synthetic content intended to test the template, length, title hierarchy and reference system of the journal.

Keywords

memory; intergenerational transmission; generations; territory; cultural heritage

JEL codes

Z13; Z18