Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity [Paperback]

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.

Jeffrey C. Alexanderis Professor of Sociology and Chair of the Sociology Department at Yale University, the author ofThe Meanings of Social Life: A Cultural Sociology(2003), and the editor ofReal Civil Societies(1998).Ron Eyermanis the author ofCultural Trauma: Slavery and the Formation of African American Identity(2001).Bernhard Giesenis the author ofIntellectuals and the Nation: Collective Identity in a German Axial Age(1997).Neil J. Smelseris the author ofThe Social Aspects of Psychoanalysis(California, 1998).Piotr Sztompkais the author ofTrust: A Sociological Theory(1999).

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 lsh