This roundtable seeks to advance a more systematic analysis of the relationship between collective memory and the economy. It addresses the fields of memory studies where economic aspects are underexplored, and of economic history/political economy, where few scholars take collective memory seriously. Contributions employ different concepts, approaches, and methodologies to the study of collective memory, and they address a variety of specific empirical aspects, brought together under the broad theme of economic crises and transformations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Taken together, the contributions highlight the role of memory narratives for the political management of economic transformations, as well as their significance for longer-term social and cultural change. This roundtable will discuss recent work trying to bring together economics, economic history and memory studies. It will discuss the memory of banking crashes, of economic imperialism, of social deprivation due to economic crises, of businessmen in postcommunist societies, of industrial heritage processes, of changing work practices. It will work with theories of agonistic memory and it will drawn on the expertise of political scientists, economists, sociologists, literary scholars and historians. Presenters are:
Stefan Berger, Ruhr University Bochum, Germany
Thomas Fetzer, Central European University, Austria
Naoki Odanaka, Tohoku University, Japan
Giuseppe Telesca, University of Glasgow, Great Britain
Joanna Wawrzyniak, University of Warsaw, Poland
Oliver Kuehschelm, University of Vienna, Austria
Tetiana Vodotyka, Kyiv School of Economics, Ukraine
20260731T140020260731T1530America/Argentina/Buenos_Aires9.5. The Collective Memory of Economic Crises and TransformationsSV202MSA Buenos Aires 2026buenosairesconference@memorystudiesassociation.org
