TITLE:
Disconcerting Insights: Milgram’s Obedience Experiments, Elias’s Civilizing Process, and the Perpetration of the Holocaust
AUTHORS:
Nestar Russell
KEYWORDS:
Milgram, Elias, Holocaust, Violence, Behind the Scenes, Avoidance
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.11 No.5,
May
31,
2023
ABSTRACT: Social psychologist Milgram (1963, 1974) and sociologist Elias ([1939] 2000) are
undisputed social science heavyweights whose scholarly contributions delve into the shared topic of violence. Despite this similarity, near nothing
has been written on any insights one might offer the other. With the aim of
bucking this trend, this exploratory article illustrates how certain
connections shared between both magna operas are mutually beneficial: Elias’s
thesis can shed new light into otherwise mysterious obedient subject behavior
and Milgram’s experiments can be used to bolster a central yet weak
pillar in Elias’s thesis. The strengthening of this weak pillar is of
particular importance because it likely reinvigorates the ability of the
Civilizing Process to offer unique and counterintuitive insights
into German perpetrator behavior during the Holocaust. It is through these
Milgram-Elias linkages that the author’s paradoxical concept of civilized
killers emerges.