Generational Memory Schemata of the Iran-Iraq War

The generational memory of the Iran-Iraq war is meant to be the memory shared by those whose collective experience of war has shaped their views in the same period of history. The fundamental fact of generational memory is that different generations interpret and remember past events in varied ways. Thus, the incident as effective as the Iran-Iraq war can act as a focal point in the reproduction of collective representations of the past, and in the present conditions of the society can configure the mentality of the generation around the understanding and common sense of war. For a conceptualization of generational memory of war, after an overview of individualistic and collectivist models of collective memory and the expression of deficiency in their methodological strategies, a new model of cognitive sociology was used to examine the mechanisms of generational memory’s production. In this model, collective memory as a knowledge structures and in the form of memory schemata which exists at a supra-individual level of social life, is cognitive by-product of the social interaction of culturally related individuals with each other amongcultural objects. The dominant methodology of research has been qualitative method, the technique of deep and semi-structured interview has been used for data collection, and the method of thematic analysis was used for data analysis. The application of the analysis method allowed us to obtain a typology of common knowledge structures that individuals in each group generation can use to understand the meaning of events and phenomena associated with warfare. These common knowledge structures, as generational memory schemata of the war indicate that how two generations with autobiographical and historical memories of war represent the Iran-Iraq war.