The significance of memory in the present

![CDATA[Memory is a powerful tool. It invokes the senses: a smell, a familiar touch, an image, a sound once heard before can transport us not only to different times but also to different places (see Tuan 1977). With each memory stimulus we conjure the context of those places, whether they be spatially defined and geographically delimited or immaterial, allegorical places- we situate our memories to place and to time. Memory can connect us to our individual pasts and to the past (as we know it) of those of our closest kin, and does so through the narration of family histories. These connections can be facilitated by sharing ancestral objects, passing down photographs and family names, and reciting habitual practices such as cooking, singing and speaking other languages. Place memory lies at the core of this volume, as illustrated by contributions that acknowledge how deeply this kind of memory is enmeshed in everyday corporeality through 'practices of incorporation' and 'practices of inscription' (Hill20 13: 381 ). These entanglements link our present-day places and contexts to our pasts and to those of our forebears. Our ability to locate memories shows how the absence of memory is 'evoked, [and] made present, in and through enfolded blendings of the visual, material, haptic, aural, olfactory, emotional-affective and spiritual' (Maddrell2013: 505). As Bell (1997: 813) has reasoned, places are 'personed ... even when there is no one there'. Extending Bell's thought to the non-human, places can also be occupied by the presence of objects, animals, thoughts and so on. Thus, we can use place in memory as a positioning tool. The focus on the spatiality of memory is the point of departure for this collection, which comprises the concomitant and geographically contextualised discussions of how these memories are positioned in place and used in the construction and maintenance of identities.]]