Cultural Trauma and Collective IdentityIn this collaboratively authored work, five distinguished sociologists develop an ambitious theoretical model of "cultural trauma"—and on this basis build a new understanding of how social groups interact with emotion to create new and binding understandings of social responsibility. Looking at the "meaning making process" as an open-ended social dialogue in which strikingly different social narratives vie for influence, they outline a strongly constructivist approach to trauma and apply this theoretical model in a series of extensive case studies, including the Nazi Holocaust, slavery in the United States, and September 11, 2001. |
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Contents
Psychological Trauma and Cultural Trauma | 25 |
Cultural Trauma Slavery and the Formation of African American Identity | 54 |
The Trauma of Perpetrators The Holocaust as the Traumatic Reference of German National Identity | 106 |
The Trauma of Social Change A Case of Postcommunist Societies | 149 |
Other editions - View all
Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity Jeffrey C. Alexander,Ron Eyerman,Bernard Giesen,Piotr Sztompka,Neil J. Smelser No preview available - 2004 |
Common terms and phrases
action activities affect African American associated attacks audience became become called camps century civil claim collective identity collective memory construction context continued course created crimes cultural trauma death debates defined developed dominant economic efforts emerged established event evil example experience expressed fact forces frame future German groups guilt Holocaust human idea identified identity important individual institutions interest involved issue Jewish Jews later less lives mass mass murder means moral movement narrative nature Nazi organizations particular past percent period perpetrators political positive postwar present produced progressive psychological question reconstruction reference remember representation represented respect responsibility result ritual role sense situations slave slavery social society story suffering suggested symbolic theory tion tragic turn understanding United universal victims Western
Popular passages
Page 5 - Trauma is not locatable in the simple violent or original event in an individual's past, but rather in the way its very unassimilated nature — the way it was precisely not known in the first instance — returns to haunt the survivor later on.
Bibliographic information
| Title | Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity |
| Authors | Jeffrey C. Alexander, Ron Eyerman, Bernard Giesen, Neil J. Smelser, Piotr Sztompka |
| Publisher | University of California Press, 2004 |
| ISBN | 0520936760, 9780520936768 |
| Length | 304 pages |
| Subjects | › › Social Science / Sociology / General |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |