After Tragedy Strikes: Why Claims of Trauma and Loss Promote Public Outrage and Encourage Political Polarization

by Thomas D. Beamish

Overview

While trauma and loss can occur anywhere, most suffering is experienced as personal tragedy. Yet some tragedies transcend everyday life's sad but inevitable traumas to become notorious public events: de facto "public" tragedies. In these crises, suffering is made publicly visible and lamentable. Such tragedies are defined by public accusations, social blame, outpourings of grief and anger, spontaneous memorialization, and collective action. These, in turn, generate a comparable set of political reactions, including denial, denunciation, counterclaims, blame avoidance, and a competition to control memories of the event.

Disasters and crises are no more or less common today than in the past, but public tragedies now seem ubiquitous. After Tragedy Strikes argues that they are now epochal—public tragedies have become the day's definitive social and political events. Thomas D. Beamish deftly explores this phenomenon by developing the historical context within which these events occur and the role that political elites, the media, and an emergent ideology of victimhood have played in cultivating their ascendence.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520401075
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	04/09/2024
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Thomas D. Beamish is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Davis, and author of Silent Spill: The Organization of an Industrial Crisis and Community at Risk: Biodefense and the Collective Search for Security.

Table of Contents

Contents

List of Illustrations 
Acknowledgments 

Introduction: The Politics of Public Tragedy 

1. A World at Risk: Modernity, Vulnerability, and Public Tragedy 

2. The Political Construction of Public Tragedy: Crisis and Political Communications in an Age of Blame 

3. The Media’s Role in Public Tragedy: A New Communication Ecology, Trauma Script, and Trauma Reporting 

4. Advocating Public Tragedy: Sympathy, Celebrity, and Tragic Harms 

Conclusion: Why Claims of Trauma and Loss
Promote Public Outrage and Encourage
Political Polarization 

Appendix: Notes on Data Collection
and Media Analysis 

References 
Index 
 

Editorial Reviews

"The overarching strengths of this book are in the historical account of the advancement from a modern to risk society, the power of the trauma script in framing or socially constructing certain events as publicly tragic, and for providing us with a way to make sense of the political climate of our time."

Social Forces