The Collective Memory and Its Dimensions: Case Study of Clergies Shiraz City

This paper examines social memory of clergies who study in traditional religious schools and its relationships with social indicators of the group. The main goals of the research have been exploration of principal elements of collective memory of clergy groups as well as explaining the respondents’ justifications for prominent events. This survey was carried out through distributing a questionnaire to clergy people of religious schools in Shiraz city. Through a probability approach of cluster sampling, 256 students and teachers were selected. They were asked about the most important national events in almost the last nine decades as well as their reasons for the importance of the prominent events. The relationships of independent variables to the prominent group memory were examined. The results indicated the absolute primacy of 1979 Revolution and War between Iran and Iraq memory among other ten events in this epoch. The great change, progress, religion and retrogress were the main categories for the justification of Revolution and War’s primacy. There are significant relationships according two variables analysis: Revolution’s memory and education as well as race; War’s memory and cultural consumerism. Education appeared in the final Logistic regression model for Revolution memory and cultural consumerism in War’s. Generally the results confirmed the Halbwachs theory of collective memory.