Issues concerning history and the construction of images of the past have always been of importance for the self-identification of individuals, social groups, governing institutions, states, and especially nations. Currently, two trends can be noticed, which may seem antagonistic, but actually condition and shape each other: renegotiating and redefining national historical narratives as well as the opening of national historiography to transnational or globalized perspective. National images and historical myths tend to increase integrity among the members of European communities only to a limited degree, and their importance to the highly normatively-oriented structures of the so called European identity — based on still less credible European memory, perceived by means of also normatively-oriented publicity — is rather doubtful. As a result, a scientific discipline has evolved, which studies subjective means of internalizing and utilizing the past rather than public aspects of culture and memory. The discipline involves the studies of tradition and passing thereof, which are rooted in the institution of qualitative sociological research. This article is about the scope and methods of such studies which are focused on how to tell about the past.
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