Collective Memory Work: A Methodology for Learning With and From Lived Experience

The seemingly mundane events of daily life create a complex knowledge base of lived experience to be explored. But how does one research common experiences and account for context, culture, and identity? A dilemma arises because experience is not just embedded in events, but also in the socially constructed meanings associated with those events.

This book details the philosophical underpinnings, design features and implementation strategies of Collective Memory Work – a methodology frequently employed by social justice activists/scholars. Collective Memory Work can provide scholars with unique and nuanced ways to solve problems for and with their participants.

Most importantly, the chapters also detail projects and social justice in action, analysing their participants’ real stories and experiences: projects that focus on LGBTQ youth, #blacklivesmatter activists, white faculty working at historically Black colleges and universities, men’s media consumption and much more. Written in an engaging and accessible style, readers will come to understand the potential of their own qualitative research using Collective Memory Work.

Corey W. Johnson is a Professor in the Faculty of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Waterloo. His research focuses on the power relations between dominant (white, male, heterosexual, etc.) and non-dominant populations in the cultural contexts of leisure. He currently co-edits Leisure Sciences and has written Fostering Social Justice through Qualitative Research: A Methodological Guide (Routledge 2015)