While it is well-known that memory is open to constant changes and transformations, this book adopts an innovative approach, emphasizing memory's role as a powerful agent of change. While political systems may change comparatively quickly, the social and cultural processes of adaptation and transformation take considerably longer. This volume explores memory as both a medium of and an impediment to change, offering an inroad into the problems, mechanisms and patterns involved in the complex processes that accompany the transition from authoritarian to democratic structures. Written by authors from different cultural and disciplinary backgrounds, the essays chart the terrain andsupply well-documented case studiesto extend knowledge on the relationship between social and political memory and the transition process.