American Sociology and Holocaust Studies

Adele Valeria Messina is an Italian historian and a member of the Research Laboratory in History, Philosophy, and Politics at the Department of Political and Social Sciences of the Calabria University where she received her doctorate in Politics, Society and Culture in 2013. Her research interests include the Holocaust, Sociology, and anti-Semitism.

"Adele Valeria Messina’s American Sociology and Holocaust Studies is a detailed examination of a broad range of social science traditions and their relationship to the study of the Holocaust. With a close reading of virtually every scholar who has ever written anything pertinent to the subject Messina supports her thesis that the alleged delay on the part of American sociology to come to grips with the Holocaust is, in fact, mistaken. Using a variety of methodologies, she unearths many less-known figures who had, even in the years prior to World War II, presaged the events of the war years. She then utilizes numerous sources, including biographical, to illustrate some of the controversies about how the day-to-day machinery of the Holocaust actually worked. Her work is evidence of an enormous command of sociological and historical research. Messina examines the many debates concerning what led up to the Holocaust, in particular controversies about its German roots, and how the events of those years should be understood. In this context she provides useful surveys of the histories of Germany and Eastern European countries as these pertain to the treatment of minorities, especially the Jews. Dr. Messina has fully succeeded in giving us, in her words, ‘a one-volume history of the sociology of the Holocaust."

• Acknowledgments IntroductionThe Famous October 2001 Conference: The Sociological Turning PointMethodologyEnglish-Language SourcesChronologyOutline of the Book1. Sociological Thinking about the Holocaust in the Postwar Years, 1945–1960s1.1. A Preliminary1.2. A Totalitarian Order1.3. Reflections on Anti-Semitism: Frankfurt School Reactions to Nazi Atrocities1.4. An Open Case: Talcott Parsons and National Socialism, from Active Political Engagement to the Years of Silence1.4.1. Parsons’s Seven Published Papers1.4.2. The Seven Unpublished Writings1.4.3. Years of Silence (1946–1948)1.4.4. The Parsons Controversy over His “Role” in Bringing Nazi Sympathizers to the U.S.1.5. The German Army in Shils and Janowitz1.6. The NSDAP and the Consensus: Between Heberle and Lipset1.6.1. The Modern Society behind the Political Man1.6.2. Lipset’s Election Analysis1.7. “Good People and Dirty Work”: Hughes1.7.1. Beyond the Banality of Evil1.7.2. The Theory of Flow and Empirical Evidence at the Basis of Hughes’s Thinking1.7.3. Halfway between Modern Industry and National Socialist Society1.7.4. “Good People” according to Critical Essays and Reviews1.7.5. “The Gleichshaltung”1.7.6. A Self-Coördination Case1.7.7. Hughes’s Delay Roots in the American Sociological Tradition1.8. Summary2. The Destruction of the Jews in a Sociological Perspective during the 1970s2.1. Preface2.2. Auschwitz in the Light of Anna Pawełczyńska: From Violence to Values2.2.1. Inside the Time and Space of Auschwitz2.2.2. The Hodological Space in the Structure of Terror2.2.3. Resistance as Defense of the Dimension of Life by Group Dynamics2.2.3.1. Resistance as Communication2.2.3.2. The Market as Defense Mechanism Par Excellence2.2.3.3. Resistance as Movement and Organization2.2.4. The Institutions of the Criminal State2.2.5. Auschwitz as Modern State2.3. Jews in Poland2.3.1. Twenty-one Years after Celia Heller2.3.1.2. Polish Nationalism during the Soviet Occupation2.3.1.3. Polish Collaboration during the German Occupation2.4. Injustice in the Eyes of German Workers2.4.1. An Obedient Proletariat2.4.2. “Was du für Volk und Heimat tust, ist immer recht getan!”2.4.3. The Early Nazists for Abel, Merkl, and Moore2.4.4. Surrender to Authority in Concentration Camps2.5. How Many Victims of the Holocaust?2.5.1. Within a Statistical Framework2.5.2. Space and Times as Coordinates2.5.3. Moral Solidarity2.5.4. Jewish Victims2.5.5. International Debate after Publication2.5.6. An Intellectual Diatribe: Horowitz and Fein2.5.7. Ben-Baruch’s Position2.5.8. Accounting for Genocide and the Sociological Tradition2.6. Summary3. Toward a Sociology of Genocide, 1980–19893.1. Genocide as a Government Solution during the 1980s3.2. The Significance of Genocide3.3. When States Sponsor Genocide3.3.1. Between Nation-State and International Law: The Role of International Organizations3.4. A General Theory on State-Sponsored Genocide: Baum and Horowitz3.4.1. The Holocaust as Crime of State in Sofsky3.4.2. The Organization of Work3.5. The Sociological Frame of Katz3.5.1. Individuals and the Factory System3.6. Tec and Sociological Categories of Genocide3.6.1. The Meaning of Resistance3.7. “The Holocaust as the test of modernity”3.7.1. Between England and Poland3.7.2. From Memories of Class to Modernity and the Holocaust3.7.3. Suffering in Society3.7.4. The Holocaust as a Product of Modernity3.7.5. His Sociological Lesson3.7.6. A Samizdat Phenomenon3.7.7. Some Literary Critics3.7.8. An Open Problem on the Modernity Thesis3.8. Summary4. The Problem of the Holocaust after 19894.1. After the Fall of the Berlin Wall4.2. From Collective National Memory to Cosmopolitan Memory4.2.1. Levy and Sznaider in the Wake of Ulrich Beck4.3. Between Memory and Political Acting: The Holocaust in Global Society4.4. Alexander and Durkheim: “What Holds Society Together?”4.4.1. Τραγῳδία as Interpretation of the Human Condition4.4.2. Trauma Theory: From Cultural Trauma to Universal Value4.5. Genre Studies and the Jewish Question4.6. The Post-Holocaust Sociology of the Social Movements4.6.1. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising as Social Movement4.6.2. The Conditions of Collective Action4.6.3. Leadership Question: Three Cases in Comparison4.6.4. The Geography of Resistance in Warsaw, Vilna, and Łódź4.7. Anti-Semitism in Brustein4.8. SummaryConclusion: The Alleged DelayWatershed EventsBibliography Index