A “social script” is a term sociologists use to describe the way people take actions based on cultural understanding that fits a recognizable pattern without anyone having to tell them what to do. In his research, Beamish has identified a social script in the way that people have recently been responding to tragedies. These responses have been very uniform, regardless of the type of tragic event, its causes or who was hurt by it.

It doesn’t matter if the crisis is a natural disaster like Hurricane Maria’s destruction of Puerto Rico in 2017 or George Floyd’s murder by a police officer in 2020. The “scripted” responses to these and other events appear almost choreographed. It begins with public expressions of shock and outrage, then shifts to accusation and social blame, claims of victimization, protest, and memorialization. 

Beamish suggests this pattern in public reaction reflects what he calls the “trauma script.” The script centers the story of innocent victims harmed by unforeseeable, uncontrollable and unwarranted circumstances socially blamed on “society” or some aspect of it rather than an individual or other outside force like fate.

View the book at the University of California Press