Ron Eyerman on Quartz - collective trauma and the inauguration

Ron Eyerman

An unfortunate side effect of collective identity is collective trauma

“Ronald Eyerman, a professor of sociology at Yale University, says that trauma experienced at an individual level is transformed into collective trauma when the traumatic experience is turned into a community narrative. On election day, individuals who thought Clinton was going to win would have experienced the trauma of this loss, individually. But the telling of that story through journalism and art, this traumatic experience became communal. The protests and marches organized around the inauguration are another way in which trauma experienced individually is turned into a collective experience. “The protests and marches are a way in which a new collective identity is forged, and that experience of trauma becomes collective,” says Eyerman.”