Loss of communality at Buffalo Creek (Kai Erikson)

by: Kai T. Erikson

Publication date: 1976

Topics: Collective Trauma

Collection: journals_contributions; journals

Language: English

Erikson, Kai T. "Loss of communality at Buffalo Creek." The American journal of psychiatry (1976).

"Survivors of the Buffalo Creek disaster suffered both individual and collective trauma, the latter being reflected in their loss of communality.
Human relationships in this community had been derived from traditional bonds of kinship and neighborliness. When forced to give up these long-standing ties with familiar places and people, the survivors experienced demoralization, disorientation, and loss of connection. They became apathetic and seemed to have forgotten how to care for one another. This was apparently a community that was stronger than the sum of its parts, and these parts--the survivors of the Buffalo Creek flood--are now having great difficulty finding the personal resources to replace the energy and direction they had once found in their community."

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Also see:

[Eco-system distrust; Triandis]
[Mass Casualty Events]

Erikson, Kai. "Notes on trauma and community." American Imago 48.4 (1991): 455-472.

Erikson, Kai T. "Notes on the sociology of deviance." Soc. Probs. 9 (1961): 307.

Dentler, Robert A., and Kai T. Erikson. "The functions of deviance in groups." Social Problems 7.2 (1959): 98-107.

Erikson, Kai. "On work and alienation." American Sociological Review 51.1 (1986): 1-8.

Freudenburg, William R., et al. "Organizing hazards, engineering disasters? Improving the recognition of political-economic factors in the creation of disasters." Social Forces 87.2 (2008): 1015-1038.

Erikson, Kai T. "A comment on disguised observation in sociology." Soc. Probs. 14 (1966): 366.

Erikson, Erik H., and Kai T. Erikson. "The confirmation of the delinquent." Chicago review 10.4 (1957): 15-23.

Erikson, Kai T. "Patient role and social uncertainty-a dilemma of the mentally ill." Psychiatry 20.3 (1957): 263-274.

Freudenburg, William R., et al. "Disproportionality and Disaster: Hurricane Katrina and the Mississippi River‐Gulf Outlet." Social Science Quarterly 90.3 (2009): 497-515.

Erikson, Kai. "Radiation's lingering dread." Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 47.2 (1991): 34-39.