With clear-eyed compassion, in vivid narrative and in participants' own words, Kai Erikson describes how certain communities have faced such disasters. He shows conclusively that new attention must be paid to their experiences if people are to maintain elementary confidence not only in themselves but in society, government, and even life itself

The 1977 Sorokin Award-winning story of Buffalo Creek in the aftermath of a devastating flood.

On February 26, 1972, 132-million gallons of debris-filled muddy water burst through a makeshift mining-company dam and roared through Buffalo Creek, a narrow mountain hollow in West Virginia. Following the flood, survivors from a previously tightly knit community were crowded into trailer homes with no concern for former neighborhoods. The result was a collective trauma that lasted longer than the individual traumas caused by the original disaster.

Making extensive use of the words of the...

While other academic disciplines claim a focus around specific subject matter, sociologists think of their field as an approach to understanding the often invisible forces and social contexts that shape the way people conduct their lives. How these forces and contexts are structured is central to sociology. But how do sociologists analyze these invisible structures? This book contributes to our understanding by bringing together a remarkable set of master essays about modern sociology written by some of the leading figures of the field. Each author describes a vision of sociological inquiry...

A masterful introduction to and appreciation of sociology as a window into our world

The culmination of a distinguished career, this fascinating exploration into the nature of human social life describes the field of sociology as a way of looking at the world rather than as a simple gathering of facts about it. Kai Erikson notes that sociologists look out at the same human scenes as poets, historians, economists, or any other observers of the vast social landscape spread out before them, but select different aspects of that vast panorama to focus on and attend to. Erikson's...