Work · Sociology & Social Theory
Modernity and the Holocaust
The Holocaust was not a relapse into barbarism; it was made possible by modern bureaucracy, the division of labour and the distance they create between an act and its consequences.
Introduction
Zygmunt Bauman, a Polish sociologist who lost his post at Warsaw University in the antisemitic campaign of 1968 and taught at Leeds from 1971, said the book was prompted by his wife Janina’s memoir of surviving the Warsaw ghetto. He argues that sociology had left the Holocaust to Jewish history or treated it as an eruption of pre-modern barbarism, whereas it was made possible by features of modern society: the bureaucratic division of labour, the separation of technical means from moral judgement, the ambition of states to design a perfect social order like gardeners weeding a garden, and the social production of moral indifference. He draws on Raul Hilberg, Hannah Arendt and Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments. The book received the European Amalfi Prize for Sociology.
Connections
Builds on
- Eichmann in Jerusalem1963 · Hannah Arendt
Appears in
- Journey ‘Thinking after Auschwitz’ · Stop 9 of 10
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