"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
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"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
Imprint | University of California Press |
Country of origin | United States |
Release date | March 2004 |
Availability | Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days |
First published | March 2004 |
Authors | Jeffrey C Alexander, Ron Eyerman, Bernard Giesen, Neil J Smelser, Piotr Sztompka |
Dimensions | 229 x 152 x 21mm (L x W x T) |
Format | Paperback |
Pages | 314 |
ISBN-13 | 978-0-520-23595-3 |
Barcode | 9780520235953 |
Categories | |
LSN | 0-520-23595-9 |