Private museum as public space: Local remembering and memory politics in Yan’an, China

Abstract

In memory studies, museums and memorials have been actively employed in constructing and reinterpreting the social memories of nation-states and sub-groups within national populations. As such, scholarly debates have often focused on the roles of social and political elites in creating national remembrance. This article provides an alternative theoretical and empirical lens that focuses on China’s local memory practices and initiatives within the context of private museums and their dynamic interaction with the state. It examines how grassroots communities in Yan’an use private museum space to commemorate, interpret and negotiate local histories promoted by political elites. While local governments actively promote official sites of memory in Yan’an as the roots of Chinese communism for patriotic education, the private museum offers an alternative form of public space for social gatherings and memory transmission. Instead of promoting a grand narrative of the founding of the nation, the private museum focuses on local folk culture and the representation of the everyday landscape in response to rapid social change. Such forms of local commemoration are not driven by radical social movements that challenge the dominant historical narrative of ruling elites. Instead, they provide spaces for local communities to safely negotiate, communicate and sometimes compromise within and through official constraints. The findings contribute to our understanding of memory politics and its roles in shaping the state-society relationships of modern China.