The national habitus: Steps towards reintegrating sociology and group analysis

This chapter suggests that the national habitus concept should play a key role in attempts to bridge between social theory and persisting cultural idiosyncrasies. It focuses on three theoretical insights about the constituting processes of the national habitus, namely constituting traumatic narratives, chosen traumas that are celebrated through national rituals, and resulting habituated modes of perceiving and conceiving reality. A group identified with Yale cultural sociology began highlighting the role of cultural trauma in creating particular national habitus or character. The attempt to reconnect sociological and psychological insights about trauma and its effects should not blur the unique path that the former discipline takes. The “positive” psychological effects of the national habitus are profusely apparent. American youngsters, for example, often insist on their personal freedoms at home using the same terminology that adult Americans attach to their right to bear arms.