Collective Memory and Historiography in the Context of Construction of the Urban Identity: The Case of Bart？n

This article is based on an ethnographic research on Bart？n, a small city on the West Black Sea coast. In the article, how a century of economic development of a little port town and its conditions prior to 1980 influence the local collective memory of Bart？n is investigated. As has been pointed out in the studies on collective memory, questions such as what is memorable, or which historical images are remembered and registered can be answered with reference to actors’ ages, classes and/or occupations. In this research, we found that different approaches about what is memorable or meaningful are based on social stratification, on the one hand and the city’s production and transformation process, that is to say, economic-historical factors on the other. In the research, narratives of 19 Bart？nese were collected and interpreted in the context of the construction of the urban identity and the urban self-image