On the genocide concept (original) (raw)

Genocide and Violence: An Introduction.

Genocidal Violence, 2023

Genocide is, in many ways, a dogmatic concept. It has, therefore, recently been criticized as too narrow or limited because it excludes numerous victim groups and their respective genocide-related identities not covered by the definition of the UN Genocide Convention (1948). This is to be considered "an unprecedented progressive step in the history of international law" but requires adjustments and a broadened scope to include so far unprotected victim groups. Furthermore, especially with regard to Germany, discussions and reflections about genocide are very much centered on the experience of the Holocaust. The relationship between colonialism and National Socialism was already addressed by contemporaries such as Raphael Lemkin, Hannah Arendt, and Aimé Césaire. After the turn of the millennium, the question has been raised in a historiographical context. Jürgen Zimmerer and others have addressed connections, structural parallels, and direct continuities from European colonialism and imperialism to the Holocaust, especially with regard to the German genocide against the Herero and Nama in what was then German Southwest Africa in 1904-1908. ...

Book Review: Genocide: A Normative Account

2015

Academics studying genocide are required, amid the exigency of predicting and preventing further instances of this crime, to extend their efforts so as to connect with policy makers, provide vital information, respond to particular instances of genocide or state-inspired genocidal campaigns, and prompt a political will to intervene at any stage in this crime. May starts by placing genocide studies in the normative foundation of this discipline. In this work, which stands as the fourth volume of a broader project that assesses the “conceptual and normative underpinnings of this ‘crime of crimes’”, genocide is treated as the most serious of all international crimes. May calls for additional work to be performed to include other forms and conceptualizations of genocide such as cultural genocide and ethnic cleansing. The book outlines the fundamental concepts behind the crime, its study, and the discipline, while offering a unique presentation of “special problems of genocide”. It also ...

‘Is Genocide Still a Powerful Word?’ Journal of Genocide Research 11, no. 4 (2009), 467-86.

“Genocide” was once perceived to be a powerful word. In 1994, the Clinton administration feared using the word to describe violence in Rwanda. Officials believed that the use of this label would activate unwanted legal obligations and increase political expectations for an American response to the crisis. In contrast, ten years later the Bush administration willingly used the term to describe atrocities being committed in Darfur, Sudan. This administration denied that a determination of “genocide” activated new legal obligations, and also found that the use of the word did not lead to substantially increased political pressures to act. This article argues that the word “genocide” has lost some of its ideational power in the sense that it has been detached from legal and political demands “to prevent and to punish” it. The article suggests some reasons for this change and also considers the extent to which such a change actually matters.

Revisiting a Founding Assumption of Genocide Studies

Genocide Studies and Prevention, 2011

Genocide studies has come a long way over the past decade, having attained a level of intellectual sobriety, academic credibility, and public recognition virtually inconceivable forty years ago. At the same time, there have been signs of convergence between the fields of genocide studies and Holocaust historiography and studies. This development can be challenging for those in Holocaust studies and historiography because the relationship betweem the two disciplines is complicated by genocide studies' claim to incorporate the Holocaust into its object of inquiry, whereas the reverse does not hold. There is a potentially subordinate situation here, or at least it can be experienced that way, even though Holocaust studies and historiography is a field with a substantial center of gravity, evidenced by the journals, book series, and research institutes devoted to the subject, such that it hardly needs to gesture to the relatively younger and smaller sibling, genocide studies. This article analyzes a recent critique of this convergence by revisiting the founding assumptions of Holocaust studies and genocide studies.