The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) is a modern social drama that enabled the nation 's apartheid past to be constructed as a cultural trauma, and by doing so created a new collective narrative of diversity and inclusion. The TRC relied primarily on testimonies from victims and perpetrators of apartheid violence who came forward to tell their stories in a public forum. Rather than simply serving as data for setting the historical record straight, this book shows that it was not only the content of these testimonies but also how these stories were told and what values were attached to them that became significant. Goodman argues that the performative nature of the TRC process effectively designated the past as profane and simultaneously imagined a sacred future community based on democratic idealism and universal solidarity.

In case studies that examine wrenching historical and contemporary crises across five continents, cultural sociologists analyze the contingencies of trauma construction and their fateful social impact. How do some events get coded as traumatic and others which seem equally painful and dramatic not? Why do culpable groups often escape being categorized as perpetrators? Why are some horrendously injured parties not seen as victims? Why do some trauma constructions lead to moral restitution and justice, while others narrow solidarity and trigger future violence? Expanding the pioneering cultural approach to trauma, contributors from around the world provide answers to these important questions. Because Mao's trauma narrative gave victim status only to workers, the postwar revolutionary government provided no cultural and emotional space for the Chinese people to process their massive casualties in the war against Japan. Even as the emerging Holocaust narrative enlarged moral sensibilities on a global scale, the Jewish experience in Europe exacerbated Israeli antagonism to Arabs and desensitized them to Palestinian suffering. Because postwar Germans came to see themselves as perpetrators of the Holocaust, the massively destructive Allied fire bombings of German cities could not become a widely experience cultural trauma. Because political polarization in Columbia blocked the possibilities for common narration, kidnapping were framed as private misfortunes rather than public problems. Because Poland's postwar Communist government controlled framing for the 1940 Katyn Massacre, the mass killing of Polish military officers was told as an anti-Nazi not an anti-Soviet story, and neither individual victims nor the Polish nation could grieve. If Japanese defeat in World War II was framed as moral collapse, why has the nation's construction of victims, heroes, and perpetrators remained ambiguous and unresolved? How did the Kosovo trauma remain central to Serbian history, providing a powerful rationale for state violence, despite the changing contours and contingencies of Serbian history?

The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) is a modern social drama that enabled the nation 's apartheid past to be constructed as a cultural trauma, and by doing so created a new collective narrative of diversity and inclusion. The TRC relied primarily on testimonies from victims and perpetrators of apartheid violence who came forward to tell their stories in a public forum. Rather than simply serving as data for setting the historical record straight, this book shows that it was not only the content of these testimonies but also how these stories were told and what values were attached to them that became significant. Goodman argues that the performative nature of the TRC process effectively designated the past as profane and simultaneously imagined a sacred future community based on democratic idealism and universal solidarity.

The cultural and performative turns in social theory have enlivened sociology. For the first time these new developments are fully integrated into new approaches to the sociology of the arts in this important new book. Building on the established research into art worlds, what is interesting for the new sociology of the arts, understood in the broad sense to include popular culture as well the classical focus on music, painting, and literature, is the relationship between art works and meaning, myth, and performance. Also reflected in these rich essays, which range from Beethoven to John Lennon to Chinese avant garde artists, is the lived experience of the artist and its impact on the process of creation and innovation.

The cultural and performative turns in social theory have enlivened sociology. For the first time these new developments are fully integrated into new approaches to the sociology of the arts in this important new book. Building on the established research into art worlds, what is interesting for the new sociology of the arts, understood in the broad sense to include popular culture as well the classical focus on music, painting, and literature, is the relationship between art works and meaning, myth, and performance. Also reflected in these rich essays, which range from Beethoven to John Lennon to Chinese avant garde artists, is the lived experience of the artist and its impact on the process of creation and innovation.

In case studies that examine wrenching historical and contemporary crises across five continents, cultural sociologists analyze the contingencies of trauma construction and their fateful social impact. How do some events get coded as traumatic and others which seem equally painful and dramatic not? Why do culpable groups often escape being categorized as perpetrators? Why are some horrendously injured parties not seen as victims? Why do some trauma constructions lead to moral restitution and justice, while others narrow solidarity and trigger future violence? Expanding the pioneering cultural approach to trauma, contributors from around the world provide answers to these important questions. Because Mao s trauma narrative gave victim status only to workers, the postwar revolutionary government provided no cultural and emotional space for the Chinese people to process their massive casualties in the war against Japan. Even as the emerging Holocaust narrative enlarged moral sensibilities on a global scale, the Jewish experience in Europe exacerbated Israeli antagonism to Arabs and desensitized them to Palestinian suffering. Because postwar Germans came to see themselves as perpetrators of the Holocaust, the massively destructive Allied fire bombings of German cities could not become a widely experience cultural trauma. Because political polarization in Columbia blocked the possibilities for common narration, kidnapping were framed as private misfortunes rather than public problems. Because Poland s postwar Communist government controlled framing for the 1940 Katyn Massacre, the mass killing of Polish military officers was told as an anti-Nazi not an anti-Soviet story, and neither individual victims nor the Polish nation could grieve. If Japanese defeat in World War II was framed as moral collapse, why has the nation s construction of victims, heroes, and perpetrators remained ambiguous and unresolved? How did the Kosovo trauma remain central to Serbian history, providing a powerful rationale for state violence, despite the changing contours and contingencies of Serbian history?"