Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity

by Alexander, Jeffrey C.; Eyerman, Ron; Giesen, Bernhard; Smelser, Neil J.; Sztompka, Piotr

• ISBN13: 9780520235946
• ISBN10: 0520235940
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-03-01
• Publisher: Univ of California Pr

Summary

In 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.

Author Biography

Jeffrey C. Alexander is Professor of Sociology and Chair of the Sociology Department at Yale University

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
Toward a Theory of Cultural Trauma	1	(30)
Jeffrey C. Alexander
Psychological Trauma and Cultural Trauma	31	(29)
Neil J. Smelser
Cultural Trauma: Slavery and the Formation of African American Identity	60	(52)
Ron Eyerman
The Trauma of Perpetrators: The Holocaust as the Traumatic Reference of German National Identity	112	(43)
Bernhard Giesen
The Trauma of Social Change: A Case of Postcommunist Societies	155	(41)
Piotr Sztompka
On the Social Construction of Moral Universals: The ``Holocaust'' from War Crime to Trauma Drama	196	(68)
Jeffrey C. Alexander
Epilogue: September 11, 2001, as Cultural Trauma	264	(19)
Neil J. Smelser
Bibliography	283	(16)
Index	299