Attachment Security and the Social World

Antigonos Sochos develops the notion of attachment from a dyadic phenomenon to a collective one. He proposes that, like individuals, social groups also collectively seek protection and security in reference to their ideologies and social institutions. Social groups that are informed by collective attachment representations underpinned by insecurity tend to construct ideological and institutional systems that cannot make them feel genuinely safe. Such groups are likely to resort to ideological rigidity, insularity, dysfunction, and conflict with other groups. Insecure collective attachment is often constructed in reference to social experiences of coercion, violence, and trauma. The book explores the American-led response to the 9/11 attacks and argues that this was a response predominantly guided by insecure collective attachment representations. As the attacks activated collective attachment, the American and other western societies drew on their long social history of coercion, violence, and trauma only to construct an incoherent collective attachment narrative and engage in ineffective protective action. With an overview of the existing literature on the subject and new contributions to the field, this book extends attachment theory by demonstrating how it can inform wider socio-cultural phenomena.