Espacio y memoria colectiva

The author demonstrates the "real" weight of space upon memory, in reconstructing the past. Halbwachs recalls the importance given by Comte to space in the acheiving of mental balance. It is space, the physical environment, which gives us a "sense of order and peacefulness" through its apparent immobility. It is this seeming spacial immobility wich gives both the individual and the group a specific memory, a way of behaviour and connecting within a delimited space. When there is an individual or group change in space, uncertainty appears; all is new, nothing is familiar, there is no memory. In this work Halbwachs shows us how even legal, economic and religious groups all "rest" on a spatial base.