Description
Book Synopsis* This is a highly original study of everyday life in the Nazi concentration camps. * Suderland examines the ways in which prisoners coped with the degrading conditions of the camps, by looking closely at their daily activities and routines, as well as the social relationships and networks they created.
Trade Review"Maja Suderland has written an innovative and tremendously exciting book. The meticulous examination of the complex reality of the concentration camps, the balanced analysis and careful reading which makes it possible to detect the finest nuances, and finally, the clear, precise and differentiated language make this an outstanding sociological work that sets new standards."
Beate Krais, Technical University of Darmstadt
"Maja Suderland's book is the first convincing sociological analysis of the Nazi concentration camps. She goes beyond specific historical cases and achieves an analytical depth which explains how the concentration camps functioned in terms of the social categories we are familiar with from 'normal' society."
Claus Füllberg-Stolberg, Leibniz University, Hannover
"This is clearly a unique study."
(Choice)
Table of ContentsForeword by Beate Krais
Preface
Translator’s note
A. Introduction
1. Topic and research question
2. The ‘Third Reich’ and the Nazi concentration camps
2.1. The establishment of the Nazi concentration camps:
Historical, social and legal background
2.2. Germany and its forcible detention camps
2.3. The organizational structure of the concentration camps
2.4. The concentration camp SS and guards
2.5. Summary: A complex interrelationship
B. Sociological avenues of inquiry
3. Introductory comments on the disciplinary context and methods
3.1. Empirical material and methodological approach
3.2. The impossibility of representing reality and the special characteristics
of Holocaust literature
3.3. The relationship between historical scholarship and sociology
4. Sociological orientations
4.1. Preliminary remarks: The sociology of Pierre Bourdieu and
the use of other central theoretical ideas
4.2. The ‘basic concepts’ of society
4.2.1 Individuals and society:
Views of a complex relationship
4.2.2 Classes and ways of life: Social differentiation
4.2.3 Gender: Physical characteristics and their
symbolic significance for social differentiation
4.2.4 ‘Ethnic group’ and caste: The belief in genetic kinship and the notion of social inescapability
4.2.5. Summary: Habitus and society
4.3. Concentration camps
4.3.1. The significance of physical torture:
Michel Foucault’s restoration of
sovereignty through ‘the vengeance of the sovereign’
and the ‘dissymmetry of forces’
4.3.2. ‘Total institutions’ and the possibility
of surviving one:
Erving Goffman’s ‘secondary adjustments’
4.3.3. Suppressing the ‘odors’ of death:
Zygmunt Bauman’s concept of culture
4.4. A theoretical perspective:
The complex society of the ‘Third Reich’
and the social reality in the forcible detention camps
C. The social world of the Nazi concentration camps
5. Camp life
5.1. Arrival and registration of the prisoners at the camp
or: How the ‘practical logic’ of the camp
gradually revealed itself to the prisoners
5.2. Prisoner life: Recurring processes
5.3. Three levels of sociality
5.4. Summary:
A micro-sociological view of the intricacies of complex camp life
or: How many realities were there?
6. Prisoner society
6.1. Fragmentation, dissociation, community-building:
Social processes
6.2. Regular prisoners, armband wearers, camp aristocracy:
The mass and the elite
6.3. Men, women, children or: What’s still normal here?
6.4. Summary:
An examination of the structure of the prisoner society
or: The significance of similarity and difference
D. Social libido
7. The constitution of social identity in the concentration camps:
The concepts of individuality and the importance
of social structures in a ‘topsy-turvy world’
E. Notes to the text
F. Bibliography
