module

Undergraduate Module Descriptor

SOC2046A: The Holocaust, Genocide and Society

This module descriptor refers to the 2022/3 academic year.

Module Content

Syllabus Plan

Whilst the module’s precise content may vary from year to year, it is envisaged that the syllabus will cover some or all of the following topics:

• What was the Holocaust and what can be learned from studying it?
•  The concept and practice of genocide
• Is the Holocaust a unique historical event?  Theoretical, and conceptual and political questions   
•  The Dialectic of Enlightenment, civilisation and progress
• The Modernity thesis: is the Holocaust an essentially modern phenomenon?
• The nature of evil: Radical or Banal?
• Social psychology: situationist explanation and the fundamental attributional error
• Explaining direct perpetrators' actions: Browning's situationist explanation,  Goldhagen's cognitive explanation and non-rational modes of explanation
• Structure and agency in the Holocaust: ‘Intentionalist’ versus ‘functionalist’ conceptions
• Rescue and resistance: supererogation, ordinary goodness and the social conditions of altruism
• The Bystander effect and its significance in modern society
• Normalisation of the Holocaust? Comparison & analogy with other genocides and examples of institutionalised wrong- and evil-doing
• Holocaust  denial
• Knowledge, ignorance and moral responsibility
• Collective responsibility/guilt, and problems of redress
• Judgement and understanding: compatible or incompatible? 

Learning and Teaching

This table provides an overview of how your hours of study for this module are allocated:

...and this table provides a more detailed breakdown of the hours allocated to various study activities:

Online Resources

This module has online resources available via ELE (the Exeter Learning Environment).