| Abstract | The article focuses on the work of memory and the unfinished past. The past few years have seen a remarkable development in the field of memory research. There has been great burst of writing, crossing the boundaries between several disciplines, and offering a wealth of new insights into this complex and multi-faceted phenomena. Most of the knowledge is no more than fifteen to twenty years old. The new outpouring of literature reflecting on this knowledge of memory presents the researchers with something of a puzzle: memories after all are nothing new. If memory is an indelible feature of social life, why only now should there be such a hightened awareness of its importance? And why should social scientists have found on a whole, so little to say until recently about the functions of memory in social life? Perhaps memory was a fact of life too obvious to attract attention, so that it was simply taken for granted--in much the same way as body for instance, which also excited little attention until recently.
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