Outsourcing the European Past

This book investigates the entanglement of memory and morality in an extended case study of the memory policy of the European Commission between 2014 and 2020. The main empirical aim is to provide an understanding of how the European Commission, various non-governmental intermediary institutions (including the Memory Studies Association and Euroclio) and, in the end, participants in policy projects, attribute meaning to the past and connect that past with specific norms and values.

The book queries how the European Commission turns more general cultural memories into concrete moral discourses in its memory policy; how these policies are institutionally operationalised; what draws these institutions to the European Commission’s memory policy; and what happens when individual citizens are exposed to the outcomes of those policy projects.

Theoretically, Outsourcing the European Past integrates theories from cultural sociology, political science, cultural studies and sociolinguistics in an innovative theory of memory.



Thomas Van de Putte, PhD, is Postdoctoral Researcher at King’s College London. His first book, Contemporary Auschwitz/Oswiecim: a synchronic, interactional approach to collective memory was published in 2021. He works on questions of cultural and collective Holocaust memory, combining perspectives from sociology, linguistics and cultural studies.