Generational Transmission of Collective Memory about Tiananmen in Hong Kong: How young rally participants learn about and understand 4 June

Journal of Contemporary China

Volumn 22, Issue 84, 2013, Pages 966-983

  Lee, Francis L F ^a   Joseph, Man Chan ^a  

^a CHINESE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG   (Hong Kong)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

MORALITY; YOUNG POPULATION;

CHINA; HONG KONG;

EID: 84885677731     PISSN: 10670564     EISSN: 14699400     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/10670564.2013.795311     Document Type: Article

References (59)

1. The numbers were taken from local news reports.
2. The findings are available at: http://hkupop.hku.hk.
3. For the concept of a critical event, see Suzanne Staggenborg, 'Critical events and the mobilization of the pro-choice movement', Research in Political Sociology 6, (1991), pp. 319-345.
4. Francis L. F. Lee and Joseph M. Chan, Media, Social Mobilization and Mass Protests in Post-colonial Hong Kong (London: Routledge, 2011)
5. Michael Schudson, Watergate in American Memory (New York: Basic Books, 1992)
6. William Sewell, Logics of History (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005).
7. Joseph M. Chan and Francis L.F. Lee, 'Hoeng-gong bat-nang mong-gei luk-sei zi-mai: Cyun-mui, Se-wuizou-zik, man-zuk-gwok-gaa, wo zap-tai-wui-jik' ['The puzzle of why Hong Kong does not forget June 4: media, social organization, nation-state and collective memory'], San-Man-Hok Jin-Gau [Mass Communication Research ] 103, (2010), pp. 215-260.
8. For detailed discussions focusing on the role of the HKA in the broader context of democratization in Hong Kong and China, see Sunny Lo's article in this issue: Sunny Shiu-hing Lo, 'The role of a political interest group in democratization of China and Hong Kong: the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China', Journal of Contemporary China 22(84), (2013), DOI: 10.1080/10670564.2013.795308.
9. The survey was conducted by the authors and will be used in the analysis in this article.
10. James W. Pennebaker and Becky L. Banasik, 'On the creation and maintenance of collective memories: history as social psychology', in James W. Pennebaker, Dario Paez and Bernard Rime, eds, Collective Memories of Political Events (New Jersey: LEA, 1997), pp. 3-19.
11. Barbara A. Misztal, Theories of Social Remembering (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2003), pp. 15-19.
12. Karl Mannheim, Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge (London: Routledge, 1972)
13. also see Jane Plicher, 'Mannheim's sociology of generation: an undervalued legacy', British Sociology 45(3), (1994), pp. 481-495.
14. Howard Schuman and Jacqueline Scott, 'Generation and collective memories', American Sociological Review 54(3), (1989), pp. 359-381.
15. Amy D. Corning, 'Emigration, generation, and collective memories: the presence of the past for emigrants from the former Soviet Union', Social Psychological Quarterly 73(3), (2010), pp. 223-244
16. M. Kent Jennings and Ning Zhang, 'Generations, political status, and collective memories in the Chinese countryside', Journal of Politics 67(4), (2005), pp. 1164-1189
17. Howard Schuman and Willard L. Rodgers, 'Cohorts, chronology, and collective memories', Public Opinion Quarterly 68(2), (2004), pp. 217-254.
18. Katherine Bischoping and Andrea Kalmin, 'Public opinion about comparisons to the Holocaust', Public Opinion Quarterly 63(4), (1999), pp. 485-507
19. Larry J. Griffin, 'Generations and collective memory revisited: race, region, and memory of civil rights', American Sociological Review 69(4), (2004), pp. 544-557
20. Howard Schuman and Amy D. Corning, 'Collective knowledge of public events: the Soviet era from the Great Purge to Glasnost', American Journal of Sociology 105(4), (2000), pp. 913-956
21. Howard Schuman and Amy D. Corning, 'Comparing Iraq to Vietnam: recognition, recall, and the nature of cohort effects', Public Opinion Quarterly 70(1), (2006), pp. 78-87.
22. Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
23. Misztal, Theories of Social Remembering, p. 84.
24. Eviator Zerubavel, Time Map (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press), p. 5.
25. Ibid. Eviator Zerubavel, Time Map (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press,p.5.
26. Jan Assmann, 'Communicative and cultural memory', in Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nunning, eds, A Companion to Cultural Memory Studies (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010), pp. 109-118.
27. James V. Wertsch, Voices of Collective Remembering (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
28. Chan and Lee, 'The puzzle of why Hong Kong does not forget June 4
29. Jill A. Edy, Troubled Pasts (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2006).
30. For some relevant studies, see Gary R. Edgerton and Peter C. Rollins, eds, Television Histories (Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky, 2003)
31. Ingrid Volkmer, ed., News in Public Memory (New York: Peter Lang, 2006)
32. Chin-chuan Lee, Hongtao Li and Francis L. F. Lee, 'Symbolic use of decisive events: Tiananmen as a news icon in the editorials of the elite US press', International Journal of Press/Politics 16(3), (2011), pp. 335-356
33. John Weispfenning, 'Cultural functions ofreruns: time, memory, and television', Journal of Communication 53(1), (2003), pp. 165-177.
34. Misztal, Theories of Social Remembering, p. 84.
35. Schuman and Scott, 'Generation and collective memories
36. Wertsch, Voices of Collective Remembering
37. Barry Schwartz, Abraham Lincoln and the Forge of National Memory (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 2000).
38. Wertsch, Voices of Collective Remembering
39. Juanjo Igartua and Dario Paez, 'Art and remembering traumatic collective events: the case of the Spanish Civil War', in Pennebaker et al., eds, Collective Memories of Political Events, pp. 79-101.
40. For examples of works emphasizing the presentist perspective, see Barry Schwartz, 'The social context of commemoration: a study in collective memory', Social Forces 61(2), (1982), pp. 374-402
41. Schwartz, Abraham Lincoln; Natasha Azarian-Ceccato, 'Reverberations of the Armenian genocide narrative's intergenerational transmission and the task of not forgetting', Narrative Inquiry 20(1), (2010), pp. 106-123.
42. Jeffrey K. Olick, 'Genre memories and memory genres: a dialogical analysis of May 8, 1945 commemorations in the Federal Republic of Germany', American Sociological Review 64(3), (1999), pp. 381-402.
43. Chan and Lee, 'The puzzle of why Hong Kong does not forget June 4'.
44. Francis L. F. Lee, 'Generational differences in the impact of historical events: the Tiananmen Square incident in contemporaryHong Kong public opinion', International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 24 (2), pp. 141-162.
45. The survey was conducted by the Public Opinion Program of the University of Hong Kong while funded by a research project of the present authors. Regarding sampling, it was impossible to follow a probability sampling approach due to the lack of a sampling frame. The research center positioned the interviewers systematically at different entrances to Victoria Park and at various places within the rally venue. The interviewers were asked to follow a designated procedure in selecting interviewees. This approach should have reduced the amount of systematic biases, especially those introduced by the interviewers' arbitrary decisions. We believe it is one of the best approaches for sampling under the constraints of the situation. The survey has 545 respondents and a response rate of 85.9%.
46. Chan and Lee, 'The puzzle of why Hong Kong does not forget June 4'.
47. The percentage includes people who reported joining the rally every year.
48. The respondents were allowed to indicate that they had more than one type of companion.
49. All names are pseudonyms. We adopt an alphabetical order in creating the 15 pseudonyms for young interviewees: the first interviewee is named 'Alan', the second interviewee is named Betty, then Cathy, David, and so on. We used a similar system when naming the 15 mature interviewees, but for a clearer differentiation, we use fictitious surnames, i.e. the pseudonyms for the mature interviewees are Mr Au, Mr Bak, Mr Cheung, Ms Du, etc.
50. The quotes were translated into English by the present authors.
51. Chan and Lee, 'The puzzle of why Hong Kong does not forget June 4'.
52. For example, Wertsch, Voices of Collective Remembering
53. Halbwachs, On Collective Memory
54. Azarian-Ceccato, 'Reverberations of the Armenian genocide narrative's intergenerational transmission and the task of not forgetting'.
55. For example, Schuman and Scott, 'Generation and collective memories
56. Jennings and Zhang, 'Generations, political status, and collective memories in the Chinese countryside
57. Schuman and Rodgers, 'Cohorts, chronology, and collective memories'.
58. Michael Schudson, 'Distortion in collective memory', in David L. Schacter, ed., Memory Distortion (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), pp. 346-363.
59. Igartua and Paez, 'Art and remembering traumatic collective events'.