Work, travel and home: A study of remembrance activity

Abstract

A quantitative study conducted in the Australian regional city of Ballarat resulted in a sample which had a high proportion of people with a personal connection to war and remembrance through family. This connection was reflected in higher levels of visitation to local, state and overseas war memorials. A factor analysis suggested that some kinds of remembrance could be grouped into a three part structure based upon creative activities of Work such as writing history, volunteer and paid military work and collecting, Travel to overseas and domestic memorials and informal appreciation of artefacts at Home. The Home group represents the most frequent form of remembrance, practiced at a social scale and which results from the creative activity of individuals. The study therefore supports the notion that individual and social remembrance and memory are closely linked and can be identified with patterns of travel. A potentially large group of people who appeared to have little interest in war remembrance was also identified.