Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review“
Sociology Confronts the Holocaust does not simply reflect a field: It creates one. The productive movement back and forth between the particular case of the Holocaust and general conceptual concerns of sociology is a substantial intellectual achievement.”—Robert Zussman, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
“While research on the Holocaust exists in a variety of disciplines, a sociology of the Holocaust has yet to be fully developed and articulated. This book therefore fills a significant gap in Holocaust studies, bringing a much needed theoretical and empirical perspective to the field.”—Janet Liebman Jacobs, author of
Hidden Heritage: The Legacy of the Crypto-Jews“This volume is a welcome addition to the field of Holocaust studies. In seeking to address the gap in the sociological study of ethnic and religious genocide, the book brings together a diverse group of social thinkers, each of whom offers a unique and important sociological approach to the study of the Holocaust.” -- Janet Jacobs * Contemporary Sociology *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Part 1: Reconsidering Holocaust Study
Introduction: Why the Holocaust? Why Sociology? Why Now? / Judith M. Gerson and Diane L. Wolf 3
Sociology and Holocaust Study / Judith M. Gerson and Diane L. Wolf 11
Part 2: Jewish Identities in the Diaspora
Post-memory and Post-Holocaust Jewish Identity Narratives / Debra Renee Kaufman 39
The Holocaust, Orthodox Jewry, and the American Jewish Community / Chaim I. Waxman 55
Traveling Jews, Creating Memory: Eastern Europe, Israel, and the Diaspora Business / Caryn Aviv and David Shneer 67
Trauma Stories, Identity Work, and the Politics of Recognition / Arlene Stein 84
Responses to the Holocaust: Discussing Jewish Identity Through the Perspective of Social Construction / Richard Williams 92
Part 3: Memory, Memoirs, and Post-Memory
In Cuba I was a German Shepherd: Questions of Comparison and Generalizability in Holocaust Memoirs / Judith M. Gerson 115
Collective Memory and Cultural Politics: Narrating and Commemorating the Rescue of Jewish Children by Belgian Convents during the Holocaust / Suzanne Vromen 134
Holocaust Testimony: Producing Post-memories, Producing Identities / Diane L. Wolf 154
Survivor Testimonies, Holocaust Memoirs: Violence in Latin America / Irina Carlota Silber 176
Historicizing and Locating Testimonies / Ethel Brooks 185
Part 4: Immigration and Transnational Practices
In the Land of Milk and Cows: Rural German Jewish Refugees and Post-Holocaust Adaptation / Rhonda F. Levine 197
Post-Holocaust Jewish migration: From Refugees to Transnationals / Steven J. Gold 215
“On Halloween We Dressed Up Like KGB Agents”: Reimagining Soviet Jewish Refugee Identities in the United States / Kathie Friedman 236
The Paradigmatic Status of Jewish Immigration / Richard Alba 260
Circuits and Networks: The Case of the Jewish Diaspora / Yen Le Espiritu 266
Part 5: Collective Action, Collective Guilt, Collective Memory
Availability, Proximity, and Identity in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: Adding a Sociological Lens to Studies of Jewish Resistance / Rachel L. Einwohner 277
The Agonies of Defeat: “Other Germanies” and the Problem of Collective Guilt / Jeffrey K. Olick 291
The Cosmpolitanization of Holocaust Memory: From Jewish to Human Experience / Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider 313
The Sociology of Knowledge and the Holocaust: A Critique / Martin Oppenheimer 331
Violence, Representation, and the Nation / Leela Fernandes 337
Bibliography 345
Contributors 385
Index 391
