Disaster without trauma. The cultural approach to the study of catastrophes

Over the past fifteen years, the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna has experienced an increasing frequency of floods and extreme weather events. Yet, despite their severity and recurrence, these disasters have failed to generate stable collective awareness of the climate crisis. This article addresses this paradox through the lens of cultural sociology and the theory of cultural trauma. Moving beyond objectivist perspectives, it argues that catastrophes do not become socially traumatic by virtue of their material impact alone, but through processes of collective meaning-making unfolding within the discursive spheres of civil society. Drawing on the strong program in cultural sociology, the paper highlights the role of narratives, performances, and symbolic interpretation in transforming events into shared experiences. Climate disasters, however, resist this transformation. Their diffuse causality, uneven spatial distribution, and complex temporal structure hinder the emergence of unified interpretive frameworks. Rather than producing coherent collective narratives, they generate fragmented and conflicting interpretations, thereby inhibiting the formation of a stable ecological consciousness. The article proposes the notion of “disaster without trauma” to conceptualize this condition. By showing how material events interact with cultural processes without crystallizing into shared symbolic forms, it contributes to rethinking the relationship between catastrophe, meaning, and collective action in the age of climate change.