Sociology of Concentration Camps

Thematic issue of State of Affairs under the editorship of Dr Piotr Filipkowski (Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences)

Deadline for submitting abstracts: 30 June 2025

This year marks the eightieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War and the liberation of the Nazi concentration and extermination camps. In connection with the numerous anniversary events and discussions concerning memory of the war that will occur, this is a good opportunity to look at how these camps have been interpreted in the social sciences, especially in sociology.

As our starting point, we take the research and work of Polish social scientists who analyzed the camps immediately after the war and in the subsequent postwar decades. These scholars managed to collect unique research material, which was often based on their own experience of being prisoners and on “participant observation” in camps (Szmaglewska, Dunin-Wąsowicz, Pawełczyńska, Kępiński, Godorowski...). They also had the courage to make strong sociological generalizations about the camp world. We would like to consider the contemporary relevance of these works in view of the enormous growth of academic literature on the subject (especially historical literature) and also in regard to the transformation of social theory.

We see two main trends of development. The first – the micro-sociological – treats concentration camps not only as places of naked violence (such as the extermination camps) but also as multidimensional social worlds, producing complex relationships, networks, roles, practices – an entire camp culture. Many authors viewed the camp experience as a kind of social experiment that, though historically unique, uncovered elementary and universal truths about the rules of social life, human relations, and even human nature. An important reference point for this trend in sociological thinking is a work by Anna Pawełczyńska, a sociologist and former prisoner: Wartości a przemoc. Zarys socjologicznej problematyki Oświęcimia (Values and Violence in Auschwitz: A Sociological Analysis). Published in 1973, the book was awarded the PTS Stanislaw Ossowski Prize and the Polityka History Prize. Although it was once widely discussed and quoted, it is rather forgotten today.

Another trend in the interpretation of concentration camps and mass extermination centers, the macro-sociological, sees them primarily as a modern form of institutionalized terror: the result of rationalization, professionalization, bureaucratization, and economization of violence by the modern state. The best-known work here is undoubtedly Zygmunt Bauman’s Modernity and the Holocaust. Although this book deals surprisingly little with concentration camp conditions per se, they would seem to be the most logical consequence of the mechanisms of modernity it describes. 

We point to these two titles as clear examples of variants of sociological theorizing about the camps. Contemporary interpretations of the camps are sometimes far removed from the ways of thinking enshrined in those works of decades ago. And yet they rarely abandon the founding assumption that, in studying the reality of the camps, it is worth transcending historical description to seek more general truths.

We invite authors to submit either historical-sociological texts, recalling and organizing the Polish sociology of camps, or theoretical texts, considering camps on the grounds of sociology, anthropology, psychology, philosophy, or other disciplines.

Possible subject areas:

• the history of social research on camps – sources, perspectives, theories
• history (historiography) versus the sociology of camps – the role of imagination and sociological theory in interpreting camp conditions
• individual testimony (literary, memoir, oral history) and social science generalizations
• memory of camps as shaped by literature, art, social science, museums, exhibitions
• “prison society” categories – characteristics, divisions, hierarchies, interpretations
• human nature or social nature? The concentration camp as a social experiment (Arendt, Sofsky, Agamben, Sloterdijk...)
• the contribution of concentration camp research to general sociology; the contribution of general sociology and social theory to the study of Nazi concentration camps (Goffman, Foucault, Bourdieu...)
• Nazi camps versus the Gulag, as well as postwar concentration camps in different latitudes
• modernity and concentration (and extermination) camps – in comparative and global approaches.

 

/// Submissions, including a title, an abstract of no more than 500 words, and the author’s name, institutional affiliation, and email address, should be sent no later than 30 June 2025 to redakcja@stanrzeczy.edu.pl.

/// The editors will inform authors by 9 July 2025 of the acceptance or rejection of their abstracts.

/// The articles should be edited in accord with the technical requirements of the journal, should not exceed 60,000 characters in length, and should be received by 31 October 2025.

/// The editors are planning to hold a seminar for authors in early November 2025. Authors will thus have an opportunity to discuss their articles with the editors and other participants before submitting them to reviewers.

/// The issue is scheduled for publication in April 2026.

The editor of the issue is Dr Piotr Filipkowski (Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences).

Language of submissions: Polish, English