Cultural factors shape the symbolic environment in which contentious politics take place. Among these factors, collective memories are particularly relevant: they can help collective action by providing symbolic material from the past, but at the same time they can constrain people’s ability to mobilise by imposing proscriptions and prescriptions.

This book analyses the relationship between social movements and collective memories: how do social movements participate in the building of public memory? And how does public memory, and in particular the media’s representation of a contentious past, influence strategic choices in contemporary movements? To answer these questions the book draws its focus on the evolution of the representation of specific events in the Italian and Spanish student movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Furthermore, through qualitative interviews to contemporary student activists in both countries, it investigates the role of past waves of contention in shaping the present through the publicly discussed image of the past.

“While a quite popular topic in cultural history, memory has been rarely addressed from social movement studies. With its careful conceptualization and rich empirical analysis of mnemonic practices around transformative protest events in mass media and among movement activists, Lorenzo Zamponi’s work gives a fundamental contribution to the bridging of memory studies and studies on contentious politics.” (Donatella della Porta, Scuola Normale Superiore)

“A truly innovative study of the role historical memory plays in social movements. This richly empirical comparative study is path-breaking in its conceptualization and design.” (Ron Eyerman, Yale University)