Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity

Download or read book Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity written by Jeffrey C. Alexander and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2004-03-22 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.