Undergraduate Module Descriptor

SOC3046: The Holocaust and Society

This module descriptor refers to the 2018/9 academic year.

Module Aims

This is an interdisciplinary course, and not as such a history of the Holocaust. It combines historical and social scientific inquiry with philosophical reflection on the nature and significance of the Holocaust and (possibly) kindred events, processes and institutions. Reflecting its interdisciplinary ethos, the module is delivered simultaneously to social science students and philosophy students taking PHL3046 - because historical and social scientific explanation and understanding of the Holocaust and kindred phenomena inherently raises questions of a philosophical nature. In this module you will therefore draw on theories, methodologies and concepts from sociology, social psychology, historical explanation and moral philosophy. Issues to be explored include: questions on what kind of event the Holocaust was, what kind of knowledge and understanding it affords, and its relationship to other events and practices of a putatively similar kind; different approaches to explaining the causes, conditions and essential features of the Holocaust; the nature of evil and the moral character of perpetrators and other participants; the relationship between the Holocaust and modernity; reflection on human nature, civilisation, social organisation and social progress; questions on perpetrator motivation and action, moral responsibility and blame.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)
This module's assessment will evaluate your achievement of the ILOs listed here – you will see reference to these ILO numbers in the details of the assessment for this module.
On successfully completing the programme you will be able to:
Module-Specific Skills	1. Think social scientifically about the nature, origins and causes of the Holocaust. 2. Reflect critically on the significance and import of the Holocaust for wider conceptions of the social organisation and ethical life of modern societies. 3. Examine critically and assess some of the leading philosophical, social scientific and interpretative attempts to account for socially organised evil- and wrong-doing in modern societies.
Discipline-Specific Skills	4. Apply and evaluate a range of social scientific and historical explanations and theories of the Holocaust and to identify and reflect on the puzzling and disturbing issues that they generate 5. Reflect on the core social scientific and historical disciplines as explanatory and interpretive endeavours and assess their success and limitations in making sense of the Holocaust and other kindred events, processes and institutions
Personal and Key Skills	6. Reflect on, and examine critically, taken-for-granted moral and cultural beliefs and values 7. Analyse and communicate, clearly and directly, a range of social scientific, theoretical, explanatory, epistemological, ontological, and normative issues arising from study of the Holocaust and other kindred events, processes and institutions 8. Work independently, within a limited time frame, and without access to external sources, to complete a specified task.

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:

1.Introduction & orientation: Why study the Holocaust?
2.Uniqueness and comprehensibility: Was the Holocaust a unique event?
3 Dialectic of Enlightenment and the Modernity thesis: was the Holocaust an essentially modern phenomenon?
4 The nature of evil: Radical or Banal?
5 Social psychology: situationist explanation and the fundamental attributional error
6 Explaining direct perpetrators' actions and motivations: Browning's situationist explanation
7 Explaining direct perpetrators' actions and motivations: Goldhagen's cognitive explanation
8 Rescue and resistance: supererogation, ordinary goodness and the social conditions of altruism.
9 Normalisation of the Holocaust? Comparison & analogy with other genocides and putative cases of social wrong- and evil-doing
10 Knowledge, ignorance and responsibility
11 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:

Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activities	Guided independent study	Placement / study abroad
23	127	0

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

Category	Hours of study time	Description
Scheduled Learning and Teaching activity	16.5	11 x 1.5 hour lectures
Scheduled Learning and Teaching activity	5	5 x fortnightly 1 hour smaller group seminars
Scheduled Learning and Teaching activities	1.5	Revision session
Guided independent study	47	Assigned readings associated with each lecture
Guided independent study	40	Preparation for essay
Guided Independent Study	40	Preparation for exam

Online Resources

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

ELE – http://vle.exeter.ac.uk/