Genocidal Actions Research Articles

Reconsidering the slaughter bench of history: genocide, theodicy, and the philosophy of history

This essay examines the philosophy of history in the aftermath of the twentieth century. It argues that the philosophy of history has been both a catalyst and a victim of genocide. On the one hand, theories about the fated course of human development have been used to rationalize and justify imperialist, genocidal actions, especially insofar as they often placed the peoples and nations on the supposed right or wrong side of an imagined world-historical trajectory. On the other hand, the philosophy of history eventually collapsed under–and was delegitimized by–the weight of the last century's mounting catastrophes. The essay opens by briefly outlining the relationship between theodicy, universal history, and empire in the works of Immanuel Kant, G.W.F. Hegel, and Martin Heidegger before turning to the writings of a number of émigré intellectuals who came to criticize their respective philosophies of history in the wake of the Second World War. Thinkers such as Theodor Adorno, Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Carl G. Hempel, Karl Löwith, Leo Strauss, and Eric Voegelin either abandoned or sought to rewrite the philosophy of history in light of what they viewed not as progress, but as world-historical calamity. For contemporary intellectuals engaged in debates about the meaning and effects of modernization, globalization, and development, these writings remain necessary points of reference. The essay concludes by suggesting that if the philosophy of history is to be of any help in ongoing attempts to understand and confront contemporary genocide, then we must first reconsider its historical complicity with genocidal ideology.

Defence of Cultural Relativism

I attempt to rebut the following standard objections against cultural relativism: 1. It is self-defeating for a cultural relativist to take the principle of tolerance as absolute; 2. There are universal moral rules, contrary to what cultural relativism claims; 3. If cultural relativism were true, Hitler's genocidal actions would be right, social reformers would be wrong to go against their own culture, moral progress would be impossible, and an atrocious crime could be made moral by forming a culture which approves of it; 4. Cultural relativism is silent about how large a group must be in order to be a culture, and which culture we should follow when we belong to two cultures with conflicting moralities.

"Definitional Traps" and Misleading Titles

"Definitional Traps" and Misleading Titles

To Massacre: A Perspective on Demographic Competition

To Massacre:A Perspective on Demographic Competition Ralph J. Hartley In 1974, during the Cypriot war, a lone Greek nationalist rationalized his mass murder of seven Turkish Cypriot women and children: "Afterwards, I noticed the child. What harm had it done, you ask? It was Turkish…Why did I shoot them? I'll tell you. Because it's war. Now, it had to be done in cold blood, you understand? You have to keep your nerve" (Loizos 1981:90). [italics original] Fein (1994:97) emphasized that genocidal behavior is "the purposeful action by a perpetrator to physically destroy a collectivity directly or through interdiction of the biological and social reproduction of group members." This man's reason for the killing of women and children is a conscious, explicit expression of genocidal behavior. Shaw's (2005:85-86) assertion that "small" accidental massacres are inevitable within modes of modern warfare where the "deliberate transfer of risks to civilians" is practiced complicates socio-psychological analyses of intent, where intent with which the act is committed is considered an active shared mental process. Behavior that involves genocidal intent does not have to be the primary design of the killer(s). Proximate goals can be as simple as immediate material gain. [End Page 237] Precedent for indiscriminant targeting of civilian non-combatants within environments of war in order to destroy the power and economy of an adversary permits the potential to blur the categorical orientation of genocidal actions (e.g. deWaal 2005, Dutton et al. 2005, Hewitt 1987, Markusen and Kopf 1995, Scherrer 1999, Slim 2003).1 It can be argued that the extent to which genocidal behavior plays a role in both inter- and intra-state war is an indicator of the level of intended dominance via destruction of the social and economic status of an adversary with an assigned identity. Shaw's (2003) thesis that genocidal activities are an extension of modern degenerate war against unarmed civilians at a multitude of scales sets the stage for a discussion of the underlying motivation of political actors and individual perpetrators for varied massacre events. Not all episodes of mass murder and summary execution, commonly considered a massacre, result from behavior that is considered, in legal parlance, genocidal (cf. Simon 1996). The description of an atrocity that includes mass killing as genocidal is susceptible to the variance in what constitutes genocidal behavior by social scientists, independent of the wording of the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention (Scherrer 1999). The term genocidal massacre is used by Markusen (1999) and Shaw (2003:8) to describe an incident of mass killing in the context of directed genocide by an organized group or politically defined entity. Although it can be argued that the technological means of mass killing of non-combatants is not relevant when the act is intentional, as in aerial bombing, this discussion is focused on events where killers are in proximity and visually confront the individuality of their victims. Massacres that target households, extended families, neighborhoods, or villages constitute behavior grounded in competition at multiple scales. The killing of specific families in Algeria in 1997-1998, for example, served effectively to eliminate adversaries and to coerce and intimidate surviving rivals (Kalyvas 1999). Assigning these horrors of contemporary atrocity behavior that include rape, torture, and amputation to historical disputes or the complexities of modern social and political environments ignores our knowledge of human activities in pre-industrial societies. Despite the defining and categorization of genocide in the modern era, massacres, where the killing is conducted irrespective of sex or age, are well documented through time as humans formed cooperative social groups and competed with other non-affiliated groups for resources valuable at that time and in that space. In addition to historically documented massacres of indigenous villagers and residential camps by dominant militaries, archaeological investigations in numerous [End Page 238] areas of the world have encountered evidence of massacres at homesteads and villages where the inferred intent was to eliminate all inhabitants. Osteological analyses of remains at many of these sites indicate the killing did not discriminate on the basis of sex or age; children often being represented as a significant percentage of victims. Ethnohistorical sources and...

When Times Collide: Ward Churchill's Use of an Epideictic Moment to Ground Forensic Argument

During Denver's 1991 Columbus Day parade, fifty Native Americans briefly blocked the parade. As part of the trial of four protesters, Ward Churchill authored a legal brief that contributed to their acquittal. This essay advances two intertwined arguments as to why Churchill's brief was effective. First, Churchill skillfully adapted to the forensic form through his choice of expert persona, objective tone, Euramerican evidence and deductive structure, effectively shifting attention from the guilt of the protestors to the blameworthy genocidal actions of Euramericans. Second, because the trial concerned actions that occurred at the epideictic moment created by the Columbus Day parade, a rupture of time in the forensic setting occurred whereby Native American re-presentations of past atrocities became relevant to the case at hand.

Geographic aspects of genocide: a comparison of Bosnia and Rwanda

The study of genocide requires a geographic approach that looks at how genocidal actions are purposefully planned to target specific groups and areas, methodically implemented through expulsions and murder, and politically intertwined with popular aspirations of territorial nationalism. A geographic focus is used here to discuss the concept of genocide, its recurrence in the twentieth century, its formulation under international law, and its eruption in Bosnia and Rwanda. In this comparative approach, geography‐linked concepts such as Lebensraum, territorial nationalism, forced migration, and ethnic cleansing are used to explain the production of genocide and its consequences.

Virile-Reality: From Armageddon to Viagra

Previous articleNext article No AccessSymposium: Virtually Regulated: New Technologies and Social ControlVirile-Reality: From Armageddon to ViagraLee QuinbyLee Quinby Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Signs Volume 24, Number 4Summer, 1999Institutions, Regulation, and Social Control Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/495405 Views: 4Total views on this site Citations: 2Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1999 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Simon Ridley Les discours de haine et l’université : des flame wars à l’alt-right, Mots , no.125125 (Mar 2021): 93–108.https://doi.org/10.4000/mots.28073Annie Potts Cyborg masculinity in the Viagra era, Sexualities, Evolution & Gender 7, no.11 (Apr 2005): 3–16.https://doi.org/10.1080/14616660500111081

The Political Economy of Famine in Sudan and the Horn of Africa

Over 300,000 Sudanese perished primarily from hunger during 1988-89 in one of the most avoidable human tragedies in recent history. Mostly from the war-torn southern part of the country, these civilians were deliberately starved by central government, and to a lesser extent the insurgent Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), which used the deprivation of food as a tactic of war. The threat of further genocidal actions by the Islamic fundamentalist junta in Khartoum and the private militias allied with the government continue to daily threaten the lives of millions of internally displaced people. Due to these man-made causes and nature’s lack of rain, up to ten million Sudanese are at risk of malnutrition, hunger and starvation in 1991.