| Summary: | This paper examines the central role that collective and individual memory can play in the analysis of some medium to long-term processes of social change. In particular, we focused on the use of biographical social survey methodologies, especially life stories, in relation to the study of traumatization processes following disasters in a social-historical perspective. In fact, according to a constructivist approach, we report the findings of a decade-long research on the processes of spatial and socio-cultural reconstruction concerning populations forced to abandon their place and move to a new town. These processes span of over fifty years and focus on some case studies of contemporary Italian history (the Vajont disaster, the Belìce earthquake, the floods of Africo and Canolo, in Calabria). The research brings out the memory as a knot for tracing a different and always dynamic story of the community in its relation to the places and times following the disaster. In this regard, the emergence of different memorial and identity narratives corresponding to the different generations of inhabitants, in the meaning given by Mannheim, proved to be of great interest.
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