Concept Of Genocide Research Articles

Mexican Lawlessness: Genocide and Massacre in Julián Herbert’s La casa del dolor ajeno

Author(s): Janzen, Rebecca | Abstract: This article examines Julian Herbert’s La casa del dolor ajeno: cronica de un pequeno genocidio en La Laguna (2015), which deals with a massacre of 300 Chinese people in Torreon, Mexico, in 1911. This cronica in novelized form weaves together the history of Chinese immigration to Mexico with contemporary violence and the author’s own experiences of research and writing. I bring Herbert’s imaginative interpretation of the past into conversation with the Mexican Constitution and penal codes that were in force during the massacre, and at the time Herbert was writing. I compare his treatment of the initial reports to late 19th and early 20th-century ideas of a right to life, work and citizenship and relate his 21st-century reflections to 20th century concepts of genocide. The article concludes that this weaving together of past and present exposes the violence of capitalism that preys on vulnerable people.

Raphaël Lemkin and the Concept of Genocide by Douglas Irvin-Erickson

Raphaël Lemkin and the Concept of Genocide by Douglas Irvin-Erickson

Genocide and Global Queer Politics

ABSTRACTThis article presents a critical analysis of the relationship between the concept of genocide and global queer politics, offering an original mapping and examination of the discourse of genocide in this respect. Starting from the beginnings of genocide discourse with Lemkin and the United Nations Genocide Convention, existing literature is analysed to reveal circumscribed usage in relation to non-heterosexual lives. The methodology combines analysis of genocide discourse with case studies. The article maps and analyses the historically shifting form of genocide discourse, including through attention to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and demonstrates how the patriarchal and heteronormative origins of this discourse continue to have effects that exclude queer people. This analysis is developed, in particular, in relation to the absence of sexuality, gender, sexual orientation or gender identity as group categories in the Genocide Convention. Interwoven with this analysis of discourse, case study analysis is used in relation to Nazi Germany, Uganda and the Gambia to establish genocidal processes focused on homosexuality in each. The scope of claims for anti-homosexual acts of genocide is thus extended in Nazi Germany and Uganda, and such a claim is initiated in the Gambia, while appreciating the complex relation of “homosexuality” to African sexual identities. It is also argued that new definitions of groups from the Rwanda tribunal represent openings for some kinds of queer politics. The concluding section then draws on the discourse analyses of Foucault and postcolonial studies to initiate discussion of the potential discursive effects of invoking genocide in relation to homosexuality or queer politics, in particular contexts. It is argued that a greater consciousness of genocide in queer analysis and politics would be desirable, even while the existing terms of genocide discourse must be contested.

Becoming Cleopatra: the forgotten Zionism of Raphael Lemkin

ABSTRACTThe biography of Raphael Lemkin has emerged of late as a highly contested lieu de memoire in charged political debates in Europe, the United States and the Middle East about the meaning, past and present, of the Holocaust and genocide. At the same time, scholars have attempted to demythologize Lemkin by reinscribing his life into its pre-World War II Polish context. Yet thus far no one has identified the precise political activities and affiliations that shaped Lemkin’s concept of genocide. In this article, I show that Lemkin, far from being a Jewish Bundist, a Polish nationalist or an apolitical cosmopolitan, was an active member of the interwar Polish Zionist movement, from which he drew the ideas that inspired his idea of the crime of genocide. In the first part of this article, I use his published writings from the 1920s and 1930s in Hebrew, Yiddish and Polish to recover a rich Jewish political framework in which his concepts of barbarism and genocide first began to emerge. In the second section, I ask how this crucial dimension of Lemkin’s life and thought vanished from the historical record, and why it has yet to be recovered in spite of the boom in biographical scholarship. Finally, I suggest how the recovery of Lemkin’s Zionism helps to reframe the current political impasse in the historiography of Holocaust and genocide studies.

GENOCIDE AND ETHNIC CLEANSING OR ABOUT DISPOSITION RELATION BETWEEN ONE INTERNATIONAL-CRIMINAL ACT AND ONE SOCIOLOGICAL-POLITICAL SCIENCE CONCEPT

Genocide is the most severe criminal act in the international law that is determined by the Genocide Convention; there is no criminal act that is legally codified as ethnic cleansing, but it is a media and sociological-political science concept that, starting from the ‘80s of the 20th century, collectively implicate large number of individually codified crimes that are determined in the international criminal legislation as crimes against humanity and war crimes. According to Lemkin, the concept of genocide is significantly wider even in regard to the concept of ethnic cleansing, since it implicates a wide scale of measures committed against a national minority, with intent to destroy it, considering not only biological and physical destruction, but including them also. In any case, there must be a dolus specialis, which according to Lemkin consists of destroying one national group in various aspects of its identity, while according to the Genocide Convention it consists exclusively of physical and biological extermination of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.
 Ethnic cleansing, as comprehended in sociological-political science interpretations, primarily denotes forced actions with the aim of creating ethnical monolithic territories. The actions are not directed to physical and biological extermination of an “undesirable ethnic group” in a territory, but as forced actions are directed to the leaving of the territory and may implicate also war crimes and crimes against humanity, but cannot be reduced only to them. In that sense, dolus specialis would be creation of an ethnically homogenous territory and this would make a difference from the genocide if this concept were legally codified. Besides, ethnic cleansing must be connected with the concept of ethnic group.

From Abstraction to Intent: The Law of Genocide and Its Insights into the Genocidal Mindset

The legal concept of genocide is heavily predicated on the subjective element of the crime –in particular, on the existence of specific genocidal intent. The factors which give rise to such intent have, that far, received little attention in legal debate; yet the insights which the law, in particular through past cases of alleged genocide which were investigated by international criminal tribunals, can provide for this question, can be valuable. On this basis, this study investigates the pathways to intent and identifies, in this regard, the process of abstraction as a condition which not only lowers inhibitions on the side of the potential genocidaire but also allows for the emergence of a position of indifference on the side of bystanders to the relevant crimes. The study explores in a preliminary step the differences between the legal and the social concept of genocide and outlines the main weaknesses of the legal understanding of the crime. But the article also highlights the advantages of a concept which places emphasis on the subjective part of the crime and which places the individual perpetrator at the basis of its contemplation. It is that perspective which permits crucial insights into the subjective development of genocide and which, ultimately, can lead to the formulation of preventive strategies at the early stages of a situation which raises concerns within the international community.

THEORETICAL PROBLEMS ASSOCIATED WITH THE LEGAL CONCEPT OF TERM “GENOCIDE”

The aim of this article is to define and analyze the theoretical problems associated with historical and legal characteristics of the concept of genocide. In this article is reviewed the history of creation and introduction into international law of the term “genocide”.

Between Abstract Event and Individualized Crime: Genocidal Intent in the Case of Croatia

AbstractThe International Court of Justice's (ICJ) decision in the case of Croatia v. Serbia raises fundamental questions about the nature of genocidal intent. While the Court was careful not to make a clear departure from established case law on the matter, its emphasis on elements such as ‘pattern’ and ‘scale’ – at the expense of the role of individual intent – indicates that the majority on the bench adopted an interpretation which brings the legal concept of genocide closer to an abstract event of mass atrocity than to an act capable of commission even by select individuals. That, however, is an understanding which is not only alien to the traditional interpretation adopted by international criminal tribunals, but also unjustifiable under the established law of state responsibility. This article considers various aspects in the judgment which invite critique in that regard, but also analyses the way in which the ICJ has dealt with the coexistence of intent and certain motives – a crucial aspect of the case which has already been object of some controversy.

Temaet folkemord i forfatterskapet til Tore Linné Eriksen


 
 
 This article points to the responsibility historians have in the formation of what we may call the collective memory of persons, groups and states. What are the images of “the other” conveyed in textbooks and media? In Norway, the historian Tore Linné Eriksen has – more than any other scholar – used his research, writings and enormous capacity for work to educate students, youth and the public in general and to create a more just image of “the other”. His driving force has been an extraordinary ability to be at the forefront in spotting international research, as well as his sense of justice and respect for the non-western world. His last extensive work on global history (Globalhistorie 1750–1900) clearly demonstrates these capabilities.
 In the early 1980s, long before the wave of genocide studies after the Rwanda catastrophe of 1994, Eriksen’s two works on Namibia –Namibia: Kolonialisme, apartheid og frigjøringskamp i det sørlige Afrika (1982) and The Political Economy of Namibia: An Annotated Critical Bibliography (1985) – used the concept of genocide to describe German conduct in Namibia in the early 20th century. In 2007, Eriksen published his book about what he calls the first genocide of the 20th century, Det første folkemordet i det tjuende århundret. Namibia 1903–1908. German and African history is woven into the question of whether the dangerous relations that developed between German settlers and Africans can be labelled genocide. The present article attempts to present Eriksen’s arguments. An introductory section deals with the trends in the international research literature and establishes a link between colonialism and genocide. In 2008, Eriksen’s article on the extinction of the Herero people in Namibia – “Utslettelse av Hererofolket i Namibia 1903– 1908” – was published in Bernt Hagtvets collection of articles, Folkemordenes svarte bok. The following year, Tore Linné Eriksen’s article in the journal Historisk Tidsskrift (2009) on genocide in a comparative colonial perspective won the prize for best article of the year.
 In Eriksen’s global history, referred to above, it is stated and shown that, to a certain extent, there is disagreement among historians as to what can be called genocide. What about the extinction of indigenous peoples due to diseases in the wake of European immigration? In his use of the term, Eriksen is more cautious than the authors of some of the works he refers to. The present article argues for more attention to be paid to the concept of “intent” when it comes to interpreting the tragic outcomes of conflict. 
 
 

Norms, Narratives, and Scholarship on the Armenian Genocide

Analyzing the politics of the past in the context of the Armenian Genocide reveals an evolving interplay between international norms, official narratives, and broader discourses. This short essay explores three aspects of these interrelationships. First, I draw on my own research to highlight the ways in which changes in Turkey's narrative of the genocide—typically referred to in official discourse assözde Ermeni sorunu(the so-called Armenian question), or more recently as1915 olayları(the events of 1915)—have to some extent paralleled shifts in the meaning and salience of the norm against genocide. Second, I note key ways in which the Turkish state's official discourse has shaped public understandings—within and, to a lesser extent, outside Turkey—of the nature of the violence against Ottoman Armenians. Third, I suggest that in influencing public understandings of the relationship between this event and the concept of genocide, Turkey's official narrative has the potential to affect understandings of the meaning of genocide more generally.

The Extermination of the Armenians and the Concept of Genocide in Contemporary American Encyclopedias

The Extermination of the Armenians and the Concept of Genocide in Contemporary American Encyclopedias

O escopo do crime de genocídio: considerações epistemológicas sobre os massacres

The criminalization of genocide represents an important step by the international community in the protection of human rights; however its classification as a criminal offense was a result of international politics, meaning that certain types of massacre were included in the definition, while others were excluded. The concept of genocide has thus always generated debate. This article moves beyond the simple legal definition of genocide, providing several contributions from the social sciences for an epistemological review of the concept of genocide, in the hope of better preventing the massacres affecting civil populations around the world. Thoughts are offered on massacres based on the works of Wayne Morrison and Jacques Semelin, with criminological support from Eugenio Raul Zaffaroni.

O genocídio e o fim das Teorias das Relações Internacionais

O genocídio é um dos crimes mais atrozes contra a humanidade, mas sua compreensão e estudo ainda representam um campo de pesquisa muito limitado, o que dificulta sua prevenção e erradicação. Este artigo propõe, portanto, que as Relações Internacionais têm uma contribuição significativa a dar ao nascente campo de Estudos de Genocídio. Insere-se, assim, o conceito de genocídio no debate sobre o “fim da teoria” nas Relações Internacionais, perguntando-se se aquele é mais adequado a um estudo através de Teorias Gerais ou de teorias de médio alcance advindas de testes de hipóteses. Conclui-se, através de argumentos substantivos, normativos e metodológicos, que, no estágio atual das pesquisas sobre o genocídio, é mais interessante fazer estudos através de Teorias, para que, entre outros, se revelem as variáveis, indicadores e valores necessários aos testes de hipótese.

Genocide on the Drina River, by Edina Bećirević, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 2014, 237 pp., $58.50 (HC), ISBN 978-0300192582

Since its inception in 1943 the concept of genocide has generated more debate than most other terms associated with organized violence. This particularly intensified after 1948 when genocide was in...

Introduction: The Ottoman Genocides of Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks

One hundred years ago, the Ottoman regime, best known as that of the Young Turks, began a series of actions that led to the genocides of Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks that only ended in 1923. The articles presented in this special issue of Genocide Studies International deal with the competing interpretations of why the Armenian Genocide occurred, with what the German archives reveal about it and any German responsibility for it, and with Turkish denial since the 1960s. They also make major contributions to understanding the lesser-known Ottoman genocides, those against the Assyrians and the Greeks. There are also questions raised about the concept of genocide and its relation to ethnic cleansing, massacres, deportation, and war. Overall, there is the theme of the complexity of genocide: modes, techniques, and motives. Careful consideration of the Ottoman genocides deepens our understanding of what genocide is and how it can be enacted. What must be averted is letting its complexity become a cover for denial.

The Nigeria–Biafra war: postcolonial conflict and the question of genocide

The Nigeria–Biafra war that raged between 1967 and 1970 made headlines around the world, above all for the major famine in the secessionist enclave of Biafra, and prompted a major international relief. It was a genuinely global event. Yet by the late 1970s, it was seldom talked about outside Nigeria. Since then, it barely features in scholarly and popular accounts of the period. The conflict is also virtually entirely absent from the field of genocide studies, which began to form in the closing decades of the twentieth century. However, in recent years, scholarly interest in the conflict is increasing. Alongside with a renewed literary interest in the war and its legacy, the international history of the war and the humanitarian operation in particular has attracted the attention of historians and academics of other disciplines. On the basis of a brief account of the conflict and the issues it raised, this contribution argues that the conflict should be considered by students of genocide, since its implications challenge some of the field's founding assumptions and premises. First, the Nigeria–Biafra war evinces the importance of conceptual history for the study of genocides. The article shows how concepts of genocide influence the perceptions and thus, in effect, the politics of conflicts, in particular in cases where representations of genocide are tied to the Holocaust, understood as a state-sponsored, ideology-driven racial hate crime. Second, and following from this point, scholars of genocide studies need to reflect on the impact of this understanding of the Holocaust on their discipline. As we argue, this model determines their (mis-)apprehension of other cases they discuss or—exactly because of this model—fail to discuss.

Massacre in the old and new worlds, c.1780–1820

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgement We would like to thank both the editors of the Journal of Genocide Research for allowing us the opportunity to publish this work collectively, and the anonymous referees of the journal for their remarks, criticisms and comments. Notes See the discussion in Paul Boghossian, ‘The concept of genocide’, Journal of Genocide Research, Vol. 12, No. 1, 2010, pp. 69–80. The term was first used by Leo Kuper, Genocide: its political use in the twentieth century (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981), and reprised by Ben Kiernan, Blood and soil: a world history of genocide and extermination from Sparta to Darfur (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007). For a similar approach, see the special issue entitled ‘Les massacres aux temps des Révolutions’, in La Révolution française: Cahiers de l'Institut d'Histoire de la Révolution française, 3 (2011). Philip Dwyer and Lyndall Ryan, ‘The massacre and history’, in Philip Dwyer and Lyndall Ryan (eds.), Theatres of violence: massacre, mass killing and atrocity throughout history (New York: Berghahn Books, 2012), pp. xiii. Most indigenous perspectives are either North or South American. See, for example, Karl Jacoby, ‘“The broad platform of extermination”: nature and violence in the nineteenth-century American Borderlands’, Journal of Genocide Research, Vol. 10, No. 2, 2008, pp. 249–267. Jacques Semelin, Purify and destroy: the political uses of massacre and genocide, trans. Cynthia Schoch (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007); Semelin, ‘Du crime de masse’, in Thomas Ferenczi (ed.), Faut-il s'accommoder de la violence? (Paris: Complexe, 2000), pp. 375–391. Mark Levene and Penny Roberts (eds), The massacre in history (New York: Berghahn Books, 1999), pp. 1, 4, 5. See Keith Windschuttle, ‘The myth of frontier massacres in Australian history, Part II: the fabrication of the Aboriginal death toll’, Quadrant, November 2000, p. 18; and Ben Kiernan, ‘Australia's Aboriginal genocide’, Yale Journal of Human Rights, Vol. 1, No. 1, (2000), p. 52. See, for example, Alain Corbin, The village of cannibals: rage and murder in France, 1870, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992). As would argue Howard G. Brown, ‘Domestic state violence: repression from the croquants to the commune,’ Historical Journal, Vol. 42, No. 3, 1999, pp. 597–622. David A. Bell, The first total war: Napoleon's Europe and the birth of modern warfare (London: Bloomsbury, 2008), p. 168. The association between the ‘genocide’ in the Vendée and later twentieth-century totalitarian genocides reached its climax during the Bicentenary of the Revolution with the publication of Reynald Secher's Le génocide franco-français: la Vendée-Vengé (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1988). For a discussion of this debate see, Jean-Clément Martin, La Vendée et la Révolution. Accepter la mémoire pour écrire l'histoire (Paris: Perrin, 2007), pp. 61–85. Roger Chickering, ‘A tale of two tales: grand narratives of war in the age of revolution’, in Roger Chickering and Stig Förster (eds.), War in an age of revolution, 1775–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 1–17. Arno J. Mayer, The Furies: violence and terror in the French and Russian revolutions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). On the Australian connection see Christine Wright, Wellington's men in Australia: Peninsular War veterans and the making of empire c.1820–40 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). See, for example, Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison, Coloniser, Exterminer: Sur la guerre et l'Etat colonial (Paris: Fayard, 2005). Kiernan, Blood and soil. A. Dirk Moses (ed.), Empire, colony, genocide: conquest, occupation, and subaltern resistance in world history (New York: Berghahn, 2008).

A Genealogy of Genocide in Francoist Spain

The extermination that was associated with the violence of the Spanish Civil War period and the early 1940s has been studied in depth in recent decades. Until now, however, the concept of genocide has not been discussed with an eye to understanding and interpreting this violence. The hermeneutical and comparative potential of the concept is, however, unquestionable. This article aims both to contextualize the origin and development of the debates about the concept of genocide, and to show what the concept could add to the debate in the case of Spain. In particular, this paper proposes to apply the concept of genocidal practice to the study of the Francoist violence, through analysis of the discourses, the reasons for the violence, and the memories of the events. From this point of view, an analysis will be made of the relationship between the practice of genocidal violence and the discourses of denial devoted to preserving the impunity of the perpetrators to this very day

Genocide and settler colonialism: can a Lemkin-inspired genocide perspective aid our understanding of the Palestinian situation?

This article examines the situation of the Palestinians through the sociological lens of the concept of genocide. Following a recent trend in genocide studies, the article engages with the original theorising of Raphael Lemkin – who coined the term ‘genocide’. These studies have highlighted the association Lemkin made between genocide and colonialism and have applied the genocide concept to settler colonial societies such as Australia. It argues that if Israel is conceivably a settler colonial project then by implication its relationship with the Palestinian people can be analysed through the genocide lens. Whilst some academics and journalists are now tentatively applying terms such as ‘ethnic cleansing’ and ‘genocide’ to describe the events surrounding the creation of the Israeli state, the historical and continuing, cultural and physical, destructive social and political relations involved in the Israel/Palestine conflict is a somewhat neglected potential case study in the field of genocide studies. The objective of this article is to highlight the potential for a Lemkin inspired sociology of genocide in analysing aspects of the Israel/Palestine conflict, through a consideration of the link he made between genocide and colonialism and some of his key ‘techniques of genocide’ as specified in the seminal text Axis Rule in Occupied Europe.

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights: the ‘uniqueness of the Holocaust’ and the question of genocide

This article analyzes the debate about the controversial Canadian Museum for Human Rights by reconstructing the efforts to establish a government-sponsored Holocaust museum from the late 1990s. This history reveals that the controversy inheres in part in the conflation of the rival imperatives to promote atrocity memorialization on the one hand, above all of the Holocaust, and human rights education/activism on the other. In multicultural Canada, memory regimes, which utilize the egalitarian concepts of genocide or crimes against humanity to emphasize the suffering of all, also vie for official validation with the Holocaust uniqueness agenda. The article concludes that the museum is caught on the horns of a dilemma of its own making: the more it emphasizes commemoration, the greater the competition among migrant group leaders for exhibition space dedicated to ‘their’ experience. The more that human rights are emphasized, the less the interest from the private donors whose generosity is essential to museum's financial viability.