Civil Sphere and Transitions to Peace: Cultural Trauma and Civil Repair-Reference-Cited by-同舟云学术

Civil Sphere and Transitions to Peace: Cultural Trauma and Civil Repair

Published:2023-10 Issue:3 Volume: Page:20-30
ISSN:1563-3713
Container-title:Sociology: Theory, Methods, Marketing
language:
Short-container-title:STMM

Author:

Alexander Jeffrey C.^ORCID

Abstract

What are the conditions for establishing solidarity after a period of intensive and divisive social conflict — what Kant called a cosmopolitan constitution? In this essay, I argue that such a widened solidarity depends on establishing a relatively independent civil sphere, the effective functioning of whose institutions depend, in turn, on a shared sacred discourse of civility. To speak such a shared language, however, requires much more than engaging in speech acts. It depends upon a deeply emotional and highly symbolic process, one in which public performances of reconciliation create new structures of feeling and identification. This theoretical argument is elaborated empirically with reference to post-Holocaust Germany, post-Franco Spain, and post-Apartheid South Africa.

Publisher

National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Co. LTD Ukrinformnauka) (Publications)

Reference25 articles.

1. 1. Alexander, J. C. (2006). The civil sphere. New York: Oxford University Press.

2. 2. Alexander, J. C. (2012a). Trauma: A Social Theory. In: J. C. Alexander (Ed.), Holocaust and trauma: moral universalism in the West (pp. 31-96). Cambridge: Polity Press.

3. 3. Alexander, J. C. (2012b). Trauma: A Social Theory. In: J. C. Alexander (Ed.), Partition and trauma: repairing India and Pakistan (pp. 136-154). Cambridge: Polity Press.

4. 4. Alexander, J. C., Eyerman, R., & Breese, E. B. (Eds.). (2011). Narrating trauma: studies in the contingent impact of collective suffering. New York: Routledge.

5. 5. Alexander, J., Jacobs, R., & Smith, P. (Eds.). (2012). The Oxford handbook of cultural sociology. New York: Oxford University Press.