Sociology’s own assumptions make Eichmann’s case sociologically indistinguishable from normal action.

Evidence

What is so alarming in the message of Dr Servatius is that – once detached from the circumstances under which it was uttered, and considered in depersonalized universal terms – it does not differ significantly from what sociology has been saying all along; or indeed, from the seldom-questioned, and still less frequently assailed, common sense of our modern, rational society. Dr Servatius’s statement is shocking precisely for this reason. It brings home a truth that on the whole we prefer to leave unspoken: that as long as the commonsensical truth in question is accepted as evident, there is no sociologically legitimate way of excluding Eichmann’s case from its application. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 85

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Bauman turns sociology’s ordinary assumptions against itself — if rational action theory has no criterion to exclude Eichmann, then the discipline’s own lens is implicated in what it studies. A disquieting reflexive move.