Social amnesia is a collective forgetting by a group of people. The concept is often cited in relation to

Russell Jacoby Russell Jacoby (born April 23, 1945) is an American academic and a professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), an author and a critic of academic culture. His fields of interest are twentieth-century European and Amer ...

's scholarship from the 1970s. Social amnesia can be a result of "forcible repression" of memories,

ignorance Ignorance is a lack of knowledge or understanding. Deliberate ignorance is a culturally-induced phenomenon, the study of which is called agnotology. The word "ignorant" is an adjective that describes a person in the state of being unaware, or ...

, changing circumstances, or the forgetting that comes from changing interests.David Rothenberg, Marta Ulvaeus
The new earth reader
the best of Terra Nova page 57, 74 Protest, folklore, "local memory", and collective nostalgia are counter forces that combat social amnesia. Social amnesia is a subject of discussion in

psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feel ...

and among some

political activist A political movement is a collective attempt by a group of people to change government policy or social values. Political movements are usually in opposition to an element of the status quo, and are often associated with a certain ideology. Some ...

s. In the U.S., social amnesia has been said to reflect "the tendency of American

penology Penology (also penal theory) is a Academic discipline, subfield of criminology that deals with the philosophy and practice of various societies in their attempts to repress crime, criminal activities, and satisfy public opinion via an appropriate ...

to ignore history and

precedent Precedent is a judicial decision that serves as an authority for courts when deciding subsequent identical or similar cases. Fundamental to common law legal systems, precedent operates under the principle of ''stare decisis'' ("to stand by thin ...

when responding to the present or informing the future... discarded ideas are repackaged; meanwhile, the expectations for these practices remain the same." Fits of social amnesia after difficult or trying periods can sometimes cover up the past, and fading memories can actually make mythologies transcend by keeping them "impervious to challenge". Historian Guy Beiner opted to use the term social forgetting and has shown that under scrutiny this is rarely a condition of total collective oblivion but rather a more complex dynamic of tensions between public forgetting and the persistence of private recollections, which can at times resurface and receive recognition and at other times are suppressed and hidden.

In biology

Another meaning of social amnesia has been studied in

biology Biology is the scientific study of life and living organisms. It is a broad natural science that encompasses a wide range of fields and unifying principles that explain the structure, function, growth, History of life, origin, evolution, and ...

among mice whose sense of smell is the primary means of social interaction.Mahlon B. Hoagland, Bert Dodson, Judith Hauc
Exploring the way life works
the science of biology page 173 It is affected by oxytocin, and mice without the gene to produce that brain protein are said to suffer from "social amnesia" and an inability to recognize "familiar" mice." The role of oxytocin in the

amygdala The amygdala (; : amygdalae or amygdalas; also '; Latin from Greek language, Greek, , ', 'almond', 'tonsil') is a paired nucleus (neuroanatomy), nuclear complex present in the Cerebral hemisphere, cerebral hemispheres of vertebrates. It is c ...

in facilitating social recognition and bonding as well as how oxytocin receptor antagonists might induce social amnesia has also been investigated.Social Amnesia in mice lacking the oxytocin gene. Nature genetics, 25, 284-285 Francis, DD, Champagne, FC & Meaney, MJ (2000)

In biology

See also

References

Further reading