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Group Identity & Collective Memory at Heartfields Assisted Living
Derek Whitaker
ANTH 200-Ethnography
Jason James
December 2, 2010
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Heartfields Assisted Living is a retirement community in the city of
Fredericksburg that offers its residents variable levels of aid, ranging from minimal
help for the more well-off to an intensive level of care for those with Alzheimer’s or
severe memory problems. Each resident is provided with their own room, which is
set up much like a hotel room consisting of a single bedroom and an adjoined
bathroom. Meals occur at scheduled times, though all residents have access to
communal kitchens and some residents own their own cooking devices, such as
microwaves, in their room. Each day there are planned activities for the residents to
take part in. These are mostly in-house activities like Yahtzee or Bible study, though
there are occasional day trips for shopping or entertainment.
At Heartfields, social interaction amongst the residents is noticeably minimal.
Observation of the residents shows that for the most part that they do not
communicate with each other on a level that would be expected of people that
seemingly have much in common and living in such close proximity. For the most
part, residents are content to sit quietly while in the vicinity of each other. Even two
residents who are seated right besides one another will usually remain silent and
not communicate. When asked about this phenomenon, the residents are willing to
admit that social interaction is indeed low at Heartfields. The residents offer a
myriad of responses when asked about the reason for this behavior. They cite as
causes the physical problems of old age or a prevalence of personalities that are not
socially inclined. Unfortunately, these answers cannot satisfactorily explain limited
sociability and are actually disproven by the fact that nearly all the residents that I
interviewed could carry on a lively conversation with me. The residents are quite
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capable of communicating with each other; they just don’t. The cause of the problem
is connected to group identity. Within a group—such as the community of residents
at Heartfields—the group identity is the basis for social relations. If a group identity
is strong then it will encourage and facilitate strong social relations; if the group
identity is weak then there will be little stimulus for the formation of relations. At
Heartfields, the group identity is fundamentally constructed out of a collective
memory. However, because collective memory is the only foundational element that
constitutes the identity, and there is a deficiency of other materials for identity
building, the constructed group identity is weak. This in turn leads to limited social
interactions, a high level of superficial social relations, and a rareness of meaningful
social relations.
While the residents of Heartfields readily recognize themselves as a distinct
group, many of them may not realize is that this group membership entails an
equally distinct group identity. This group identity is the way the group of
individuals perceives themselves collectively. Groups consciously and unconsciously
construct their identity around any number of commonalities that they might share.
The way identity is constructed at Heartfields can be imagined in much the same
way that diasporic communities form their identities. Stuart Hall (1995) describes
diasporic communities as
people who will never literally be able to return to the places from
which they came; who have to make some kind of difficult settlement
with the new…cultures with which they are forced into contact, and
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who have succeeded in remaking themselves and fashioning new
kinds of cultural identity…consciously or unconsciously. (p. 47-8)
Hall description fits well with the Heartfields community. Most residents do not
choose to come to Heartfields and those that do choose for themselves decide as
such because living at home is no longer a feasible option; in essence, they do not
really choose either. Finding themselves in this strange environment, alienated from
their old lives by physical space and from their new lives by emotional space, they
must make sense of their new life. Like the diasporic community, the residents of
Heartfields face the necessity of fashioning for themselves a new identity. However,
owing to Heartfield’s nature, the construction of group identity is problematic. This
is because the residents have few commonalities to draw on to forge a strong group
identity. This is counterintuitive, as on causal observation the residents would
appear to have a fair amount in common. They are all around the same age, are all of
the same occupational status (retired), and all live in the same location. However, as
the strength of an identity is dependent on the substantiality of its commonalities,
these elements are too minor to be constructive of a strong identity. Therefore,
while commonalities in age, occupation status, and location can certainly aid the
building of group identity, in and of themselves they are not enough to build a
strong group identity. To build a viable group identity the residents must turn to
something more significant; the residents must turn to collective memory.
The idea of collective memory has its origins in the works of Maurice
Halbwachs, who was the first to use the term (Schwartz, 1996, p. 276). James
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Wertsch (2008), working in the tradition of Halbwachs, defined collective memory
as "a representation of the past shared by members of a group such as a generation
or nation-state" (p. 120). For the collective memory of the Heartfields residents, this
includes both those events which group members conceive as being experienced
directly by the whole group—meta-experiences like the Great Depression—as well
as events that group members conceive as being experienced by individuals but
which are similar to experiences that other group members had—personal but
abstractable experiences like childhood. In understanding collective memory, it is
important that it should not be confused with an actually existing thing residing in
some metaphysical group mind. Halbwachs clarifies that “while the collective
memory endures and draws strength from its base in a coherent body of people, it is
individuals as group members who remember” (as cited in Coser, 1992, p. 22).
Collective memory’s nature as a shared representation lends itself towards the
construction of group identity. Akin to how Jan Assmann (1995) speaks of cultural
memory, collective memory is a way of saying, “‘this is what we are’” and “‘this is
what we are not’” (p. 130). In that sense, collective memory is way of establishing
boundaries for the group, something that is essential for the building of identity.
How powerful collective memory is for group identity can be seen in an outsider
trying to assimilate himself into a group whose collective memory he does not have
access to. Sociologist Lewis A. Coser (1992) writes of his childhood as an immigrant
trying to fit in with his American-born peers:
I felt for a long time that there was something in my relations with
native Americans that blocked full communication…I then realized
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that they and I did not share enough collective memories. The
memory of major sports events shared by my friends was not part of
my memory…I was excluded from their collective memory and they
from mine. (p. 21)
Because he was unable to take part in their collective memory, Coser had to face
separation from his age-peers. In the same way, the Heartfields residents’
experience of isolation is linked to their inability to relate to each other through a
collective memory. Those residents who are able to construct a collective memory
together are capable of forming a group identity and through that identity can form
social relations with each other.
As the Heartfields residents need collective memory to construct a group
identity, it is fortunate then that the Heartfields setting is well disposed towards the
creation of a collective memory. This is because it is an environment well engaged
with the past, as observation of Heartfields reveals. On examination one finds an
atmosphere that is imbued with artifacts of the past. One instance of this is the
media they consume, which can be said to be past-situated, that is from an historical
period prior to cotemporary times, predominantly from the time of the 1940’s to the
1970’s. The music that plays on the public stereos seems to be exclusively ‘oldies.’
This also appears to be the predominant music style that the residents listen to in
the privacy of their rooms, as one resident had an extensive record collection of
oldies music in his room, while another told me, “We still sing the old songs,” before
he himself sang a song from the World War Two era. As for television, the residents
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most commonly watch TVLand, a channel that airs reruns of ‘classic’ television
shows like The Andy Griffith Show and Gunsmoke. Though television captures less
attention then music does, it is still able to attract small crowds who watch together
in silence. Therefore, it is clear that past-situated media plays a major role at
Heartfields. What this past-situated media does is draw the resident’s consciousness
into the past, into their memory, making them half in the then and half in the now. In
addition, the residents rooms were populated with the relics of their former lives:
medals received in military service; pictures of their families with whom they used
to live; a multitude of random keepsakes scattered on dressers. Each one of these
items is a reminder of a stage of live that is now forever in the past. In this
remembrance they bind themselves to the past. They make themselves at once both
the person who lived the past experience and the person who remembers the
experience in the present. As with watching TVLand and listening to oldies music,
with these items of remembrance the residents are half then and half now.
To determine further what role the past played for the residents, I asked
them if they spent much time thinking or talking about the past. To this question
some of the residents would sheepishly deny that it was a subject of concern for
them. There are, perhaps, two reasons for this kind of response: the first, that they
didn’t want to fulfill any perceived stereotype of the elderly; and the second, that
there is generally a negative connotation that goes along with spending much time
thinking or talking about the past. I believe it is the second of these reasons that
played the larger role. One resident when asked if he spent much time thinking
about the past said, “No, I don’t get down in the dumps thinking about old girlfriends
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or regrets or things like that.” This sort of response was common among those who
denied that the past was a major subject of discussion or contemplation. Those
respondents were quick to stress that they didn’t get upset over the past. However,
the majority of people said that they did spend a good deal of time talking and
thinking about the past. One resident described to me how every now and then the
“military guys” would sit around and exchange stories. Another resident told me
that sometimes she would like to go back to the “old days.” Several residents talked
of how they liked to recall events from their childhood. It makes sense that the
residents should spend as much time as they do in contemplation of the past. For
them it is a comfortable escape from the pains and banality of the present and a way
of avoiding confronting a discouraging future. On this issue, Halbwachs (1952)
wrote that the present could be uncomfortable and the future anxiety provoking,
but that the past cause in us “neither uncertainty, rivalry, nor envy…the most painful
aspects of yesterday’s society are forgotten…” (p. 51). In this way he says we are
prone to retreating into the past and treating it nostalgically. This indeed appears to
be the case at Heartfields. This emphasis on the past further encourages the
development of a group identity out of collective memory.
Collective memory as it exists at Heartfields is constituted of countless
experiences. Significant ones include childhood, marriage, and past occupations
held. The experience most prominently mentioned, however, was personal
involvement in or remembrance of the Second World War. I asked residents about
what were the events that were most important in their lives. What always came up
was having served in World War Two or how it effected their life, and it was
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consistently this subject upon which those interviewed spent the most time talking.
Those who had served would at length recount to me war stories with vivid details.
Dates could be recalled, names reproduced, and even very minute features of the
experience were remembered; one of the residents talked very fondly of drinking
tea and eating apple-buttered toast while in the submarine service; another told me
a series of colorful vignettes from his time fighting in France. The importance of
details to the storytellers was evident in the fact that they not only remembered
them and mentioned them, but they also took the time to spell out the names of
people and places. These were clearly cherished tales. References to the military
also played heavily in the jokes and references made by the residents. I can illustrate
a few examples. On one occasion, as a lull came over an interview I was conducting,
the handful of residents I was speaking with began to make allusions to the military
while talking of an unrelated subject. Eventually this morphed into an overt
discussion of the military, of which they all had much to say. Further, there is a pair
of residents who refer to each other by their former military ranks. Additionally, one
resident, who was in the Navy, told me how he jokingly banters in the manner of a
inter-service rivalry with another resident who served in the Air Force.
There are a few of possible reasons for the heavy significance attached to
military service. First, the residents who have served in the military already have an
identity in wider American culture as veterans. It is something that to a large extent
is already placed upon them by society and something that they already carry
around with them. It is a readymade mould for them that they are familiar with and
that they can adopt easily. It is an identity that is reinforced even in retirement, as
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evidenced by a resident telling me how recently a journalist had come into
interview some of the residents about what it means to them to be a veteran. In
addition, the Second World War could have great importance for the residents
because of the time at which it occurred in their lives. Howard Schuman and
Jacqueline Scott conducted a study wherein they questioned American adults about
which events were the most significant in their lives. They found that the events that
were deemed the most important were those that occurred during adolescence and
young adulthood (as cited in Coser, 1992, p. 29-30). This is in fitting with my
findings from Heartfields. For the residents there, adolescence and young adulthood
was the period in which the Second World War took place, and it is to the Second
World War that they give heavy emphasis.
As residents talked with me, the stories they told had the appearance of
having been refined through repeated telling. The same stories were often told to
me more than once, and each time the story was told, it was reiterated in the very
same manner. This was done through the exact reuse in word choice, chronology,
and timing; even the same dramatic effects of the storyteller were employed in a
consistent fashion. This is highlighting of the social nature of these memories. They
exist not only as personal recollections of the people who experienced them but also
as objects to be shared with others. As Halbwachs (1952) said, no memory exists in
isolation but, rather, is always the creation of social context (p. 38).
Collective memory does not simply come about through the residents giving
attention to the past. Instead, it arises out of a social process between the residents.
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As Coser (1992) noted, it is through such social actions that collective memory is
constructed (p. 22). Individuals form the stories when they shape direct, lived
experience into stored memories. These memories are further refined through
personal recollection and, most extensively, when they are told in groups.
Transformations must occur when sharing the memory to a group, because for the
memory to be meaningful to a group it has to be constructed in a matter that the
audience can relate to. Additionally, for the story to be understood, it must be told in
a vernacular intelligible to the listeners. This process is a reconstructive one
wherein events are always interpreted in the light of the present (Assmann, 1995, p.
130). The exchange of memories between storyteller and audience not only
processes the memories but also causes the production of collective memory.
Storyteller and audience are building with totalities of thought, as Halbwachs
(1952) would call them (p. 52). If collective memory were to be conceived as a
house, with the brick being the individual memories, these totalities of thought
might be considered as the rooms of the house; that is, the structures bigger than
the individual aspects yet smaller than the united whole. Through the above process
the residents recall, relate, and contextualize their memories. This renders them
building blocks for the construction of collective memory, which itself is the
essential element of group identity at Heartfields.
Undoubtedly, collective memory is the fundamental component of group
identity at Heartfields. It is this identity that forms the basis for all social relations
amongst the residents there. However, despite the existence of this basis for social
relations, meaningful social interactions are still not very common at Heartfields. It
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seems this is because of the nature of the Heartfields identity, which is built on a
heavy reliance on collective memory. As said earlier, there are few commonalities
for group identity at Heartfields, and most of those that do exist are not significant
enough for the building of a strong group identity. Even though the residents have
some shared traits such as similar age, living in the same building, and all being
retired, they are insufficient for the crafting of a strong group identity. To
compensate for the dearth of viable identity building resources, the Heartfields
community must rely extensively on collective memory. In this model, collective
memory takes on an exaggerated role as it swells to fill the mould of the group
identity. Nonetheless, even in its inflated state, the collective memory is not strong
enough to produce anything more than a frail group identity, and therefore a weak
social relations and minimal interactions. Collective memory in and of itself is
unable to compensate for the lack of substantial grounds for group identity. This is
why social interactions are so infrequent at Heartfields. For social relations at
Heartfields to take on a more robust character the residents would need to find—or
be provided with—something more significant for the building of a group identity. It
is not clear what this might be; it could be something as simple as group building
exercises for the residents, or it could be as drastic as a total transformation in the
way retirement institutions are structured and conceived. Whatever this missing
resource might be, until it is found the residents of Heartfields—and all residents
who find themselves in similar institutions—will be stuck in an environment that is
alienating and lacking in meaningful social relations.
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References
Assmann, J., & Czaplicka, J. (1995). Collective memory and cultural identity.
New German Critique, 65, 125-133. Retrieved November 18, 2010, from
the Academic Search Complete database.
Coser, L. A., & Halbwachs, M. (1992). Maurice Halbwachs: on collective
memory. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press.
Hall, S. (1995). New culture for old. A place in the world: places, culture and
globalization (pp. 47-48). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Schwartz, B. (1996). Introduction: the expanding past. Qualitative Sociology,
19(3), 275-282. Retrieved November 18, 2010, from the Academic
Search Complete database.
Wertsch, J. (2008). The narrative organization of collective memory. Ethos,
36(1), 120-135. Retrieved November 17, 2010, from the Academic
Search Complete database.