Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-f46jp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-13T08:18:27.122Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Adjusting to Genocide: The Techniques of Neutralization and the Holocaust

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Alexander Alvarez
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In recent years, as social scientists questioned the intellectual boundaries set by customary perceptions of criminality, their discourse expanded to incorporate more than purely legalistic definitions of crime. In addition to conventional street crimes, some scholars began examining both interpersonal and collective actions and behaviors that were once considered to be outside the scope of commonly accepted definitions of criminality. For example, criminologists now study crime categorized as occupational (Albanese 1987; Cressey 1953; Green 1990; Hollinger and Clark 1983; Horning 1979; Nettler 1974; Tracy and Fox 1989), environmental (Block and Bernard 1988; Brady 1987; Stone 1987; Tallmer 1987), political (Barak 1994; Block 1989; Block and Chambliss 1981; Chambliss 1993; Quinney 1970; Schwendinger and Schwendinger 1970; Tunnell 1993; Turk 1969), and corporate (Clinard and Yeager 1980; Clinard et al. 1979; Coleman 1994; Reiman 1979; Sutherland 1949), using methodology and terminology once reserved for predatory street crime. This trend can be traced to the pioneering work of Thorsten Sellin (1938) and Edwin Sutherland (1940, 1949), who argued for broader, more inclusive definitions of criminality and less conventional approaches to the study of crime.

Type
Articles
Information
Social Science History , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , Summer 1997 , pp. 139 - 178
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1997 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Agnew, R. (1994) “The techniques of neutralization and violence.” Criminology 32: 555-80.Google Scholar
Albanese, J. (1987) Organizational Offenders. Niagara Falls: Apocalypse.Google Scholar
Alvarez, A. (1992) “Trends and patterns of justifiable homicide: A comparative analysis.” Violence and Victims 7: 347-56.Google Scholar
Aly, G., Chroust, P., and Pross, C. (1994) Cleansing the Fatherland: Nazi Medicine and Racial Hygiene. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Andreopoulos, G. J., ed. (1994) Genocide: Conceptual and Historical Dimensions. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Andrist, R. K. (1964) The Long Death: The Last Days of the Plains Indian. New York: Collier.Google Scholar
Arad, Y. (1987) Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Arendt, H. (1963) Eichmann in Jerusalem. New York: Viking Press.Google Scholar
Asch, S. E. (1955) “Opinions and social pressure.” Scientific American 193: 31–35.Google Scholar
Asch, S. E. (1956) “Studies of independence and conformity: A minority of one against a unanimous majority.” Psychological Monographs 70 (Whole of no. 416).Google Scholar
Barak, G. (1994) “Crime, criminology, and human rights: Toward an understanding of state criminality,” in Barak, G. (ed.) Varieties of Criminology: Readings from a Dynamic Discipline. Westport, CT: Praeger.Google Scholar
Baum cited in Thompson, W. K. (1988) “Ethics, evil, and the final solution,” in Rosenberg, A. and Myers, G. E. (eds.) Echoes from the Holocaust. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Bauman, B. (1989) Modernity and the Holocaust. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Bettelheim, B. (1966) The Informed Heart. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Block, A. (1989) “Violence, corruption, and clientelism: The assassination of Jesus de Galindez, 1956.” Social Justice 16: 64–88.Google Scholar
Block, A., and Bernard, T. (1988) “Crime in the waste oil industry.” Deviant Behavior 9: 113-29.Google Scholar
Block, A., and Chambliss, W. (1981) Organizing Crime. New York: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Blumenthal, N. (1957) “On the Nazi vocabulary,” in Dimur, B. and Esh, S. (eds.) Yad Vashem Studies on the European Jewish Catastrophe and Resistance, vol. 1. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem.Google Scholar
Blumenthal, N. (1967) “From the Nazi vocabulary,” in Eck, N. and Kubovy, A. L. (eds.) Yad Vashem Studies on the European Jewish Catastrophe and Resistance, vol. 6. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem.Google Scholar
Brady, J. P. (1987) “Who’s burning Boston?” in Hills, S. L. (ed.) Corporate Violence: Injury and Death for Profit. Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Breitman, R. (1991) The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Brieger, G. (1980) “The Medical profession,” in Friedlander, H. and Milton, S. (eds.) The Holocaust: Ideology, Bureaucracy, and Genocide. Millwood, NY: Kraus International.Google Scholar
Browning, C. R. (1992) Ordinary Men. New York: Aaron Asher books, HarperCollins.Google Scholar
Brundage, W. F. (1993) Lynching in the New South. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Burleigh, M. (1994) Death and Deliverance: Euthanasia in Germany c. 1900-1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Burleigh, M., and Wippermann, W. (1991) The Racial State: Germany 1933-1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Chalk, F., and Jonassohn, K. (1990) The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Chambliss, W. (1993) “State organized crime,” in Chambliss, W. and Zatz, M. S. (eds.) Making Law: The State, the Law, and Structural Contradictions. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Clinard, M. B., and Yeager, P. (1980) Corporate Crime. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Clinard, M. B., Yeager, P., Brissette, J., Petrashek, D., and Harris, E. (1979) Illegal Corporate Behavior. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
Cohn, C. cited in R. J., Lifton, and Markusen, E. (1990) The Genocidal Mentality: Nazi Holocaust and Nuclear Threat. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Coleman, J. W. (1994) The Criminal Elite. New York: St. Martin’s Press.Google Scholar
Cressey, D. (1953) Other People’s Money: A Study in the Social Psychology of Embezzlement. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.Google Scholar
Des Pres, T. (1976) The Survivor. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
De Zayas, A. M. (1989) The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, 1939-1945. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
Dower, J. W. (1986) War without Mercy. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
Dressen, W. (1993) “Euthanasia,” in Kogon, E., Langbein, H., and Rückerl, A. (eds.) Nazi Mass Murder: A Documentary History of the Use of Poison Gas. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Esh, E. (1963) “Words and their meanings,” in Eck, N. and Kubovy, A. L. (Eds.) Yad Vashem Studies on the European Jewish Catastrophe and Resistance, vol. 5. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem.Google Scholar
Feig, K. G. (1979) Hitler’s Death Camps: The Sanity of Madness. New York: Holmes & Meier.Google Scholar
Fein, H. (1979) Accounting for Genocide: National Responses and Jewish Victimization during the Holocaust. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Fein, H. (1993) Genocide. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Ferraro, K.J., and Johnson, J. M. (1983) “How women experience battering: The process of victimization.” Social Problems 30: 325-39.Google Scholar
Fest, J. C. (1970) The Face of the Third Reich. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
Ficowski, J. (1982) “The fate of the Polish gypsies,” in Porter, J. N. (ed.) Genocide and Human Rights: A Global Anthology. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.Google Scholar
Freeman, M. (1991) “The theory and prevention of genocide.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 6: 185-99.Google Scholar
Freeman, M. (1995) “Genocide, civilization, and modernity.” British Journal of Sociology 46: 207-23.Google Scholar
Friedlander, H. (1980) “The manipulation of language,” in Friedlander, H. and Milton, S. (eds.) The Holocaust: Ideology, Bureaucracy, and Genocide. Millwood, NY: Kraus International.Google Scholar
Friedlander, H. (1995) The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Friedman, P. (1982) “The extermination of the Gypsies,” in Porter, J. N. (ed.) Genocide and Human Rights: A Global Anthology. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.Google Scholar
Gillespie, C. K. (1989) Justifiable Homocide. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.Google Scholar
Glaser, D. (1971) Social Deviance. Chicago: Markham.Google Scholar
Goldhagen, D. J. (1996) Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Gordon, S. (1984) Hitler, Germans, and the “Jewish Question.” Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Green, G. S. (1990) Occupational Crime. Chicago: Nelson Hall.Google Scholar
Haas, P. J. (1988) Morality after Auschwitz. Philadelphia: Fortress.Google Scholar
Hauptman, L. (1995) Tribes and Tribulations. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
Hilberg, R. (1985) The Destruction of the European Jews. New York: Holmes & Meier.Google Scholar
Hilberg, R. (1992) Perpetrators, Victims, and Bystanders. New York: HarperCollins.Google Scholar
Hitler, A. Cited in Des Pres, T. (1976) The Survivor. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hollinger, R. C. (1991) “Neutralizing in the workplace: An empirical analysis of property theft and production deviance.” Deviant Behavior: An Interdisciplinary Journal 12: 169–202.Google Scholar
Hollinger, R. C., and Clark, J. (1983) Theft by Employees. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Horning, D. M. (1979) “Blue collar theft: Conceptions of property attitudes toward pilfering and workgroup norms in a modern industrial plant,” in Smigel, E. and Ross, H. L. (eds.) Crime against Bureacracy. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.Google Scholar
Höss, R. (1992) Death Dealer. Buffalo: Prometheus.Google Scholar
Jacob, F. Cited in Klee, E., Dressen, W., and Riess, V., eds. (1991) The Good Old Days: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Jacobs, S. L. (1992) Raphael Lemkin’s Thoughts on Nazi Genocide. Lewiston, ME: Edwin Mellen.Google Scholar
Jäger, K. Cited in Klee, E., Dressen, W., and Riess, V., eds. (1991) The Good Old Days: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Katz, F. E. (1993) Ordinary People and Extraordinary Evil. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Kelman, H. C. (1973) “Violence without moral restraint: Reflections on the dehumanization of victims and victimizers.” Journal of Social Issues 29: 25–61.Google Scholar
Kelman, H. C. and Hamilton, V. L. (1989) Crimes of Obedience. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Klee, E., Dressen, W., and Riess, V., eds. (1991) The Good Old Days: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Kren, G. M., and Rappoport, L. (1994) The Holocaust and the Crisis of Human Behavior. New York: Holmes & Meier.Google Scholar
Kretschmer, K. Cited in Klee, E., Dressen, W., and V., Riess, eds. (1991) The Good Old Days: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Landsheer, J. A., Hart, J. T., and Kox, W. (1994) “Delinquent values and victim damage: Exploring the limits of neutralization theory.” British Journal of Criminology 34: 44–53.Google Scholar
Lang, B. (1988) “Language and genocide,” in Rosenberg, A. and Myers, G. B. (eds.) Echoes from the Holocaust. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Lanzmann, C. (1985) Shoah: An Oral History of the Holocaust. The complete text of the film. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
Lemkin, R. (1944) Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.Google Scholar
Levi, P. (1960) Survival in Auschwitz. New York: Collier.Google Scholar
Levi, P. (1965) The Reawakening. New York: Collier.Google Scholar
Levi, P. (1986) The Drowned and the Saved. New York: Summit.Google Scholar
Levin, N. (1968) The Holocaust. New York: Schocken.Google Scholar
Lifton, R. J. (1986) The Nazi Doctors. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Lifton, R. J., and Markusen, E. (1990) The Genocidal Mentality: Nazi Holocaust and Nuclear Threat. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Macionis, J. J. (1995) Sociology, 5th ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Mars, G. (1974) “Dock pilferage: A case study in occupational theft,” in Rock, P. and McIntosh, M. (eds.) Deviance and Social Control. London: Tavistock.Google Scholar
Maschmann, M. (1964) Account Rendered: A Dossier of My Former Self. London: Abelard-Schuman.Google Scholar
Matza, D. (1964) Delinquency and Drift. New York: John Wiley.Google Scholar
Milgram, S. (1969) Obedience to Authority. New York: Harper Torchbooks.Google Scholar
Miller, R. L. (1995) Nazi Justiz: Law of the Holocaust. Westport, CT: Praeger.Google Scholar
Mills, C. W. (1940) “Situated actions and vocabularies of motive.” American Sociological Review 5: 904-13.Google Scholar
Minor, W. W. (1981) “Techniques of neutralization: A reconceptualization and empirical examination.” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 18: 295–318.Google Scholar
Minor, W. W. (1984) “Neutralization as a hardening process: Considerations in the modeling of change.” Social Forces 62: 995–1019.Google Scholar
Mitchell, J., and Dodder, R. A. (1983) “Types of neutralization and types of delinquency.” Journal of Youth and Adolescence 12: 307-18.Google Scholar
Mitchell, J., Dodder, R. A., and Norris, T. D. (1990) “Neutralization and delinquency: A comparison by sex and ethnicity.” Adolescence 25: 488-97.Google Scholar
Nettler, G. (1974) “Embezzlement without problems.” British Journal of Criminology 14: 70–77.Google Scholar
Polsby, D. D. (1986) “Reflections on violence, guns, and the defensive use of lethal force.” Law and Contemporary Problems 49: 89–111.Google Scholar
Quinney, R. (1970) The Social Reality of Crime. Boston: Little, Brown.Google Scholar
Raschke, R. (1982) Escape from Sobibor. New York: Avon.Google Scholar
Reiman, J. (1979) The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison: Ideology, Class, and Criminal Justice. New York: John Wiley.Google Scholar
Rubenstein, R. (1975) The Cunning of History. New York: Harper Colophon Books.Google Scholar
Rubenstein, R. L., and Roth, J. K. (1987) Approaches to Auschwitz. Atlanta: John Knox.Google Scholar
Sabrin, B. F., ed. (1991) Alliance for Murder: The Nazi-Ukrainian Nationalist Partnership in Genocide. New York: Sarpedon.Google Scholar
Schwendinger, H., and Schwendinger, J. (1970) “Defenders of order or guardians of human rights?” Issues in Criminology 5: 123-57.Google Scholar
Scott, M. B., and Lyman, S. M. (1968) “Accounts.” American Sociological Review 33: 46–62.Google Scholar
Segev, T. (1987) Soldiers of Evil. New York: Berkeley.Google Scholar
Seidelman, W. E. (1989) “Medical selection: Auschwitz antecedents and effluent.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 4: 435-48.Google Scholar
Sellin, T. (1938) Culture Conflict and Crime. New York: Social Science Research Council.Google Scholar
Sereny, G. (1974) Into That Darkness. London: Andre Deutsch.Google Scholar
Shields, I. W., and Whitehall, G. C. (1994) “Neutralization and delinquency among teenagers.” Criminal Justice and Behavior 21: 223-35.Google Scholar
Smigel, E. O. (1979) “Public attitudes toward stealing as related to the size of the victim organization,” in Smigel, E. and Ross, H. L. (eds.) Crime against Bureaucracy. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.Google Scholar
Stannard, D. E. (1992) American Holocaust. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Staub, E. (1989) The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Stone, C. D. (1987) “A slap on the wrist for the kepone mob,” in Hills, S. L. (ed.) Corporate Violence: Injury and Death for Profit. Totowa: NJ: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Sutherland, E. H. (1940) “White collar criminality.” American Sociological Review 5: 1–12.Google Scholar
Sutherland, E. H. (1949) White Collar Crime. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
Sykes, G. M., and Matza, D. (1957) “Techniques of neutralization: A theory of delinquency.” American Sociological Review 22: 664-70.Google Scholar
Takaki, R. (1987) Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Takaki, R. (1993) A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America. Boston: Back Bay.Google Scholar
Tallmer, M. (1987) “Chemical dumping as a corporate way of life,” in Hills, S. L. (ed.) Corporate Violence: Injury and Death for Profit. Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Taylor, T. (1980) “The legal profession,” in Friedlander, H. and Milton, S. (eds.) The Holocaust: Ideology, Bureaucracy, and Genocide. Millwood, NY: Kraus International.Google Scholar
Thornton, R. (1987) American Indian Holocaust and Survival. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.Google Scholar
Tolnay, S. E., and Beck, E. M. (1995) A Festival of Violence. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Tracy, P. E., and Fox, J. A. (1989) “A field experiment on insurance fraud in auto body repair.” Criminology 27: 589–603.Google Scholar
Tunnell, K. D., ed. (1993) Political Crime in Contemporary America: A Critical Approach. New York: Garland.Google Scholar
Turk, A. T. (1969) Criminality and the Legal Order. Chicago: Rand McNally.Google Scholar
Tyrnauer, G. (1982) “Mastering the past: Germans and Gypsies,” in Porter, J. N. (ed.) Genocide and Human Rights: A Global Anthology. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.Google Scholar
Weber, M. (1947) The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Willenberg, S. (1989) Surviving Treblinka. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Williams, R. A. (1990) The American Indian in Western Legal Thought: The Discourses of Conquest. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Yates, D. E. (1982) “Hitler and the Gypsies: The fate of Europe’s oldest Aryans,” in Porter, J. N. (ed.) Genocide and Human Rights: A Global Anthology. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.Google Scholar
Zeitlin, L. R. (1971) “A little larceny can do a lot for company morale.” Psychology Today 14: 22–26, 64.Google Scholar