Date of Award
Spring 2025
Embargo Period
4-23-2027
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
College/School/Department
Department of Sociology
Program
Sociology
First Advisor
Ronald Jacobs
Committee Members
Brandon Gorman, Jeffrey C. Alexander
Abstract
This dissertation, comprising three papers, develops a new sociological approach to understanding the self toward creating high-leverage social theory. Drawing on critical realist personalism in social science philosophy and humanist theories of culture, I develop the concept of the “sacred self,” a meaning-centered human person actualized through culture. My work argues for centering the moral, believing nature of the human person in sociological research. It also demonstrates a methodological route by which to make social ontology visible, thereby enabling and calling for new interpretations of patterned crises in the social world. In my first paper, I explain how elites drive crises, using discourse from 18th and 19th century thinkers to create a theory of what I term “collective despair.” Using the collapse of the Soviet empire as a case study, I situate suicide epidemics and anti-elite sentiment, including the nostalgia for totalitarianism and far-right populism, as natural manifestations of crisis. My second paper explores oral histories of Soviet Union nostalgia to demonstrate that a macro theory of despair holds true at the micro level. This paper extends the theoretical framework of the first paper, uniquely connecting suicide, nostalgia, and revolutionary nationalism by revealing their ontological connection within the despairing human person. My third paper explores a natural route by which elites create despair. It examines how elites transform meanings of the sacred, and the consequences of this evolution. Through in-depth interviews, I examine how the meanings of harm have been subjectivized in the contemporary US. This paper identifies a “theory-practice gap” between what elites claim and what they actually do in their efforts to mitigate psychic (non-physical) harm, revealing, in this case, that professed liberalism operates in an illiberal manner. I illustrate the outcomes of a theory-practice gap, including educational stratification, alienation, and low social trust.
License
This work is licensed under the University at Albany Standard Author Agreement.
Recommended Citation
Sever, Cassandra, "Conceptualizing the Sacred Self: Toward a Theory of Collective Despair" (2025). Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present). 150.
https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/etd/150
