Memory, rights, and sen's "capabilities approach"

There is ever-growing attention—both academically and publicly—to the importance of memory rights and the implications for recognizing these rights in society. Memory in general, and memory rights in particular, have been recognized as fundamental components of current social, national, and international conflicts, notable among them the recent racial struggle in the United States (US) and the debate surrounding the Polish compensation law. In academic discourse, scholars have tried to define the right to memory and to translate it into a usable theoretical structure that can help memory actors in their mnemonic work. However, despite growing attention to the concept of memory rights, there is a paucity in discourse focusing on the relationship between memory rights and media, although it is media (and, more than ever, digital media) that communicate memories in society and turn the abstracted “collective memory” into a “tangible” social construction.