“New Perspectives on Everett C. Hughes’ Sociological Works about the Holocaust, 1930s-1980s,”

This article argues for a broader reconsideration of American sociologist Everett C. Hughes’s work, and of the initial reaction of the discipline of sociology to the atrocities of the Holocaust. In particular, it looks at how Hughes’s thoughts offer us a lens through which to view the polarizing debate on whether genocide should be seen as an expression of the “banality of evil,” or whether focus should be placed on its planning and premeditation. Reading his work within the context of Pierre Bourdieu, one discovers a series of reasons why American sociologists have been slow in seeing the importance of Hughes’s categories of ordinary executioners in the comprehension of the Holocaust. Additionally, the article sheds light on how it is possible to emend the supposedly delayed response to the Holocaust by sociology. Finally, the article will show how re-reading Hughes’s writings, as well as the scholarly criticism of them, contribute new insights to the historical debate among functionalists, intentionalists and logicists.