INTERVIEW
Senior Researcher at CONICET and Professor of the Postgraduate Program in Social Sciences UNGS-IDES,
Elizabeth Jelin holds a PhD in Sociology and was awarded in the Houssay Prize for a Lifetime Achievement
Elizabeth Jelin
in Social Sciences in 2013. She has been Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin and member of the
Academic Directory of that institution. Jelin’s main research focus lies on human rights, political repression
Memory, a hinge
between past and
present
memories, citizenship, social movements and family. Her book, “Los Trabajos de la Memoria”, the first of
the series “Memorias de la repression”, originally published in 2002, was currently revised and reprinted
in Lima (IEP, 2002). Furthermore, she is the autor of “Pan y afectos. La transformación de las familias”
(2010, Fondo de Cultura Económica); “Fotografía e identidad: captura por la cámara, devolución por
la memoria”, with Ludmila Da Silva Catela y Mariana Giordano (Nueva Trilce, 2010); “Por los derechos.
Mujeres y hombres en la acción colectiva”, with Sergio Caggiano and Laura Mombello (Nueva Trilce,
Interviewed by By Laura Mombello
2011); “Las lógicas del cuidado infantil. Entre las familias, el mercado y el Estado”, with Valeria Esquivel
and Eleonor Faur (IDES-UNFPA-UNICEF, 2012).
Fifteen years after the Research and Training Program for young researchers “Collective Memory and
Repression. Comparative views on the democratization process at the Southern Cone of Latin America”,
organised by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) and coordinated by Elizabeth Jelin, she analyses
the road travelled since then, as well as the progress achieved on the studies on memory and the current
epistemological challenges in the field.
Laura Mombello holds a PhD on Social Sciences. She is member of the Núcleo de Estudios sobre
Memoria (IDES) and took part in the program “Collective Memory and Repression. Comparative
views on the democratization process at the Southern Cone of Latin America” (1999).
Laura Mombello: What is the origin of the
Program?
choosing it, as during the study of the human rights
movement, the concept used by their activists came
up. That was the starting point.
Elizabeth Jelin: When we started to think about the
project, back in 1996 - 1997, the main researches
were mainly focused on the institutional questions
of the transitions, such as: how to rebuild or build
democratic parliaments, how do the legislatures
work, which is the best electoral system, the
political parties, etc. Attention was also paid to the
executive powers and the State reforms, from the
public administration to the public policies. At the
same time, there was a “Social gap”; a gap in the
study regarding what happened to people, what
happened to societies during this transition process.
Our first idea was looking into the meaning of
building citizenship from the presence of the new
and different social movements. Later on, following
Picture: Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación Productiva de la República Argentina
to the social movement logic and their claims,
Interview originally published in Spanish in Clepsidra. Revista interdisciplinaria de Estudios sobre Memoria, ISSN 236-2075, Nº2, October 2014, pp. 146-157
Observing Memories
ISSUE 1
28
we started to work with the topic of memory. As
Sometimes I feel
institutionalist in
front of those working
with culture topics or
culturologist in front of
the political scientists
of the institutionality.
I think the lack of
integration of those two
dimensions is currently
one of the issues missing.
I always say, I bumped into memory rather than
Observing Memories
ISSUE 1
29