Assassination of Theo Van Gogh

Ron Eyerman is Professor of Sociology and Co-Director of the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University. He is the author of Cultural Trauma: Slavery and the Formation of African American Identity and Between Culture and Politics: Intellectuals in Modern Society; a co-author of Music and Social Movements: Mobilizing Traditions in the Twentieth Century; and a co-editor of Myth, Meaning, and Performance: Toward a New Cultural Sociology of the Arts.

“Ron Eyerman has combined his two exquisite skills of an exceptionally thorough researcher and a consummate theorist to produce a uniquely enlightening study of the intricate mechanism which-in our times of the frailty of social setting, acute public uncertainty, and heightened susceptibility to moral panics-leads to the production of ‘traumatic events,’ subsequently deployed as catalysts in the reshaping of public memory and reinterpretation of collective identities. A masterly study of one of the most neuralgic phenomena in contemporary culture, bound to inform and direct our efforts to comprehend its dynamics.”-Zygmunt Bauman, Professor Emeritus, University of Leeds and University of Warsaw “Ron Eyerman has produced a theoretically sophisticated analysis of the murder of Theo van Gogh, evoking themes of globalization, immigration, free speech, law and justice, gender relations, journalism and the media, political tolerance, and multiculturalism, all of which are at the center of debates in the contemporary social sciences. This is an important book.”-Robin Wagner-Pacifici, author of The Moro Morality Play: Terrorism as Social Drama

• Acknowledgments ix1. Assassination as Public Performance: The Murder of Theo van Gogh 12. Mediating Social Drama 243. Perpetrators and Victims 564. The Clash of Civilizations: A Multicultural Drama 1025. A Dutch Dilemma: Free Speech, Religious Freedom, and Multicultural Tolerance 1416. Cultural Trauma and Social Drama 161Notes 175Bibliography 203Index 215