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An earthquake in 1997 destroyed
Giotto’s frescoes of St. Francis in the
basilica at Assisi, Italy. Mira Debbs
reflected on how this loss resulted in
socially constructed cultural trauma.Willy Brandt’s kneefall at the
memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto
Uprising in 1970 was an act that
symbolized German repentance,
triggering a shift in collective identity.
human suffering and evil; it is
(almost) beyond question that this
event could be understood in any
other way. Unbelievable as it may
seem now, he argues, it is neither
natural or inevitable that those
events came to be understood
as an act of unprecedented evil;
rather: “...the category of ‘evil’ must
be seen not as something that
naturally exists but as an arbitrary
construction, the product of
cultural and sociological work.”
In his 2001 essay “On the Social
Construction of Moral Universalism:
The ‘Holocaust’ from War Crime
to Trauma Drama,” Alexander
demonstrates in rich detail that in
the years immediately after World
War II the Holocaust was not
viewed with anything like the
same horror and condemnation
as it is now. As a socially distinct
ethnic group, European Jews were
typically negatively regarded in
many societies, which in turn led
to a less than empathetic response
to their plight. Only as they became
more integrated into wider society,
and their distinctness as a social
group lessened, did it become
possible for individuals and
institutions to identify with them
psychologically. By the early 1970s,
the necessary cultural structures
were in place for the Holocaust to
be re-evaluated, re-narrated, and
symbolically recoded as an act of
evil. Only then was it elevated to
the level of a traumatic event for
all humankind and not just the
Jews. On a state visit in 1970,
the West German chancellor’s
“kneefall” at the Warsaw Ghetto
memorial has been described by
Valentin Rauer, in Alexander’s
Social Performance (2006), as a
“symbol in action.”
Alexander’s cultural sociology
is rapidly establishing itself as
one of the most innovative and
insightful sociological theoretical
frameworks. As part of the wider
“cultural turn” within the social
sciences, his work has helped
retrain the analytical focus of
social thinkers onto the topic
of “meaning.” In particular his
adaptation and application of
Durkheim’s work to understandingCULTURE AND IDENTITY
the creation of meaning and its
maintenance across a range of
areas—including the Holocaust,
democracy and civil society, and
the 9/11 attacks—have led to
more scholars developing and
extending his ideas. For example,
US sociologist Mira Debbs has
analyzed the response in Italy
to the destruction in 1997 of the
artist Giotto’s iconic frescoes in
the basilica at Assisi. Such was the
sacred status allocated to them in
the national imagination that their
loss has often been given more
prominence than that of human
life. Debbs draws upon Alexander’s
ideas to demonstrate how the
narration and coding of the
artworks in a particular way—as
sacred national treasures—led to
such a strong, seemingly irrational,
collective emotional response by
the majority of Italian people. ■