Ronald J. Berger Livres

Berger uses his father's and uncle's life histories as the basis for this cross-generational study combining personal narrative and sociological analysis. While Michael Berger was interned at SS camps in Poland, his brother Shlomo escaped the camps by passing as a Christian with a Polish construction crew and as a member of the Polish Partisans and the Soviet Army. The brothers' stories of success through luck, daring, and skill help explore a central problem of social the relationship between human agency and social structure. Berger addresses the influences of prewar conditions on wartime adjustment and offers observations on memories of suffering and the implications for contemporary victimization politics and postmodern social thought. Portions appeared first in The Sociology Quarterly (v.36, no.1). Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

Melvin Juette has said that becoming paralyzed in a gang-related shooting was "both the worst and best thing that happened" to him. The incident, he believes, surely spared the then sixteen year-old African American from prison and/or an early death. It transformed him in other ways, too. He attended college and made wheelchair basketball his passion--ultimately becoming a star athlete and playing on the U.S. National Wheelchair Basketball Team. In Wheelchair Warrior, Juette poignant memoir is bracketed by sociologist Ronald Berger's thoughtful introduction and conclusion, which places this narrative of race, class, masculinity and identity into proper sociological context. While Juette's story never gives into despair, it does challenge the idea of the "supercrip."

INHOUD: Sociology and the Holocaust. - Why the Jews?. - The rise of Nazism and the evolution of anti-Jewish policy. - The social structure of the genocidal regime. - Jewish responses to the Holocaust. - Bystanders and third-party resistance. - European collective memories: Germany and Poland. - Jewish collective memories: Israel and the United States. - Genocide, religion, and social solidarity