Cultural factors shape the symbolic environment in which contentious politics take place. Among these factors, collective memories are particularly relevant: they can help collective action by providing symbolic material from the past, but at the same time they can constrain people's ability to mobilise by imposing proscriptions and prescriptions.

This book analyses the relationship between social movements and collective memories: how do social movements participate in the building of public memory? And how does public memory, and in particular the mediäs representation of a contentious past, influence strategic choices in contemporary movements? To answer these questions the book draws its focus on the evolution of the representation of specific events in the Italian and Spanish student movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Furthermore, through qualitative interviews to contemporary student activists in both countries, it investigates the role of past waves of contention in shaping the present through the publicly discussed image of the past.

Lorenzo Zamponi is a Research Fellow in sociology and political science at the Scuola Normale Superiore, in the Istituto di Scienze Umane e Sociali (Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences) in Italy, where he is part of the COSMOS (Centre on Social Movement Studies) research team. He holds a Ph.D. in Political and Social Sciences from the European University Institute. His research interests include memory, contentious politics and media analysis.

Part 1: Introduction, Background and Methods .- 1. Introduction .- 2. Memory and Movements: A Long Research Path .- 3. The Student Movements in Italy and Spain and How to Study Their Memories .- Part 2: Memory in Discourse: Representations of the 1960s and 1970s in the Media Forum .- 4. Contentious Memories of the Italian Student Movement: The 'Long 1968' in the Field of Public Memory .- 5. Contentious Memories of the Spanish Student Movement: Representations of the Spanish 1968 in the Public Memory of the Transition .- Part 3: Memory in Action: Mnemonic Practices, Collective Identities and Strategic Choices in Contemporary Student Movements .- 6. Syntax: The Forms of Memory .- 7. Semantics: The Competing Narratives of Student Movement Memories .- 8. Pragmatics: Memory, Identity and Strategy .- 9. Conclusions.