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.
Table of Content
Preface
1. Toward a Theory of Cultural Trauma: Jeffrey C. Alexander
2. Psychological Trauma and Cultural Trauma: Neil J. Smelser
3. Cultural Trauma: Slavery and the Formation of African American Identity: Ron Eyerman
4. Triumph and Trauma: Bernhard Giesen
5. The Trauma of Social Change: A Case of Postcommunist Societies: Piotr Sztompka
6. On the Social Construction of Moral Universals: The ‘Holocaust’ from War Crime to Trauma Drama: Jeffrey C. Alexander
Epilogue: September 11, 2001, as Cultural Trauma: Neil J. Smelser
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Jeffrey C. Alexander is Professor of Sociology and Chair of the Sociology Department at Yale University, the author of The Meanings of Social Life: A Cultural Sociology (2003), and the editor of Real Civil Societies (1998). Ron Eyerman is the author of Cultural Trauma: Slavery and the Formation of African American Identity (2001). Bernhard Giesen is the author of Intellectuals and the Nation: Collective Identity in a German Axial Age (1997). Neil J. Smelser is the author of The Social Aspects of Psychoanalysis (California, 1998). Piotr Sztompka is the author of Trust: A Sociological Theory (1999).
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