| Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity Contributor(s): Alexander, Jeffrey C. (Author), Eyerman, Ron (Author), Giesen, Bernard (Author) |
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ISBN: 0520235959 ISBN-13: 9780520235953 Publisher: University of California Press OUR PRICE: $34.60 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: March 2004 Annotation: "A timely and sophisticated series of studies. Articulating diverse strands of social theory with the historical episodes that have had major affective resonances within national cultures, the volume as a whole contributes significantly to our understanding of relationships between collective affect and social process."--Michael Shapiro, Professor of Political Science at the University of Hawaii "The fine and deeply argued essays in this book build a strong case against a naturalistic theory of collective traumas. Traumas are made, not born, claim the authors. And they brilliantly cast a steely gaze on several social nightmares--the Nazi holocaust, slavery in the United States, September 11, 2001--in order to limn the social and cultural processes by which events come to be viewed as threatening to the very identity of collectivities. Ultimately this is a book about the nature of the very normative order that gives meaning to the human condition."--Robin Wagner-Pacifici, author of "Theorizing the Standoff "With its rich range of empirical cases, this book will inspire new debates across the social sciences about memory, collective suffering, and coping."--Arjun Appadurai, Yale University "Near the end of the 20th century, scholarly interest in collective memory surged, spurred on both by re-examinations of the Holocaust and other canonical sources of trauma, and by the rise of a new set of institutionalized processes of collective memory-work. It is the great merit of these essays to approach the problems of collective trauma in sociological terms, as theorizable patterns in socially and culturally organized processes. This is a vital corrective to more naturalisticunderstandings and complement to those focused more narrowly on psychology or textual analysis."--Craig Calhoun, President, Social Science Research Council |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Political Science | Public Policy - Social Services & Welfare - Social Science | Sociology - General |
| Dewey: 361.1 |
| LCCN: 2003012762 |
| Physical Information: 0.83" H x 6.1" W x 8.98" (1.01 lbs) 314 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: 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. |