Using culture as an entry point, and informed by the work of contemporary social theorists, the essays in this volume identify and challenge sites where the representational dimension of social life produces national identity through scripts of belonging, or traces. The contributors utilize empirically based studies of social policy, political economy, and social institutions to offer a new way of looking at the creation of meaning, representation, and memory. They scrutinize subjects such as narratives in the U.S. coal industry's change from digging mines to removing mountaintops; war-related.