Memory and Scales: Culture, Institutions and Interaction

In this chapter, I provide a theoretical and methodological outline of what an interscalarinterscalar approach to cultural memorycultural memory entails. I first sketch how the call for interscalar and holistic approaches to cultural memory resulted from the strong media-centered third phase of the field of memory studies. I then ground my interscalar approach in a cultural sociologycultural sociology that is concerned with the links between interactional context and cultural meaningmeaning. I will describe how memory narratives resort in the macromacro-culturalmacro-cultural realm, versions of which are promoted on the mesomeso-level by institutionsinstitutions and actors involved in the politics of memory, and inform actions and interactions on the micromicro-level, the structure of which then again impacts macro-cultural meanings. Methodologically, I explain how, while moving from macro-analysis downwards to interactioninteraction, I shift from methods that are text-centered to methods that are people-centered.