Research within the Bystander project

The Bystander project is one of the priority themes of the Living History Forum for the period 2006-2009. The project consists of a comprehensive educational material supported by teachers training, a permanent and a travelling exhibition and a research component.

With the Holocaust as its point of departure, the aim of the project is to create awareness concerning the role of the bystander and causes and consequences of passivity. What does it mean to be a bystander? What stops us from intervening against bullies, or in larger contexts where human rights are seriously violated? How are we responsible when we do not intervene in any way?

Social norms and the normalisation process are crucial in understanding the role of the bystander. How norms and norm formation affect the actions of individuals and groups in situations where they can choose to be passive or active, has emerged as a key issue in the project and more specifically in the research activities. Norms and the formation of norms have a decisive impact on events such as the Holocaust, by facilitating a “production” of passive bystanders. Many institutions in the Third Reich – the educational system, legislation and the legal system, the private sector – collaborated to change norms and enable a radical discrimination against German jews.

The research component of the Bystander project is intended to focus primarily on society, norms and norm formation by compiling existing research but also to initiate new interdisciplinary research and make it available to people outside the scientific community, such as school teachers.

One important contribution to highlighting field of research is an interdisciplinary research conference to be held in Uppsala October 17-18 2008 in collaboration with the universities in Uppsala and Stockholm.
The conference will focus on four main themes.