OUTLINES - CRITICAL PRACTICE STUDIES • No. 2 • 2010 • (1-14) • http://www.outlines.dk Doing Memory, Doing Identity; Politics of the Everyday in Contemporary Global Communities M. Kontopodis & V. Matera Humboldt University Berlin, Institute of Eur. Ethnology, Mohrenstraße 40/41, D-10117 Berlin, Germany & Milano Bicocca University, Piazza dell‟Ateneo Nuovo 1, 20126 Milan, Italy Abstract The special issue Doing Memory, Doing Identity: Politics of the Everyday in Contemporary Global Communities draws on anthropological theory, performance studies, feminism, post- colonial studies and other theoretical traditions for an insightful examination of the everyday practices of doing memory. A series of ethnographies and qualitative studies from locations as diverse as Italy, Norway, Greece, France, Brazil and China complement profound theoretical analyses to investigate the multiple links between individual and collective pasts, futures and identities, especially focusing on emotions, embodiment, the senses, difference and power relations. Taking a critical stance in regard to current social-scientific and socio-political debates, this special issue reflects on the political and ethical aspects of day-to-day memory practices and examines issues related to identity, imagination and otherness. Doing Memory Very often memory, identity and imagination have been treated in scientific research as psychological phenomena. We know however – the latest – since the time of the Soviet psychologist Lev S. Vygotsky that the psychological is the social (Stetsenko, 2009; Stetsenko & Arievitch, 2004; Vygotsky, 1934/1987). Psychological functions cannot b thought independently of social interaction and the activities or practices in the contexts of which they emerge. The psychological functions themselves as well as the relations among them are socio-cultural and historical and there is no need or possibility to divide what is “psychological” from what is “socio-cultural-historical”. Memory for example depends on semiotic mediation, i.e. presupposes the use of signs and tools that are by