Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Digital Commons Network

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Social and Behavioral Sciences

University of South Florida

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Genocide

Articles 1 - 12 of 12

Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network

Book Review: Kings, Conquerors, Psychopaths: From Alexander To Hitler To The Corporation, Tim Bakken Nov 2023

Book Review: Kings, Conquerors, Psychopaths: From Alexander To Hitler To The Corporation, Tim Bakken

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

The book Kings, Conquerors, Psychopaths is a survey of a vast amount of human wrongdoing. It lays bare the motivations of aggressors who wish to subjugate nations or groups of people and corporate executives and government bureaucrats who make discretionary decisions that harm people. Along with cataloging mass killings by despots and soldiers, the book includes stories about Ponzi-schemers and the deaths of automobile drivers and passengers who were killed by vehicle defects known to the manufacturer. The book posits that “[p]owerful, elite forces are trying to force us backward toward a non-democratic state, one where power, wealth, and prerogative …


Round Table (Part 5): What’S Raphaël Lemkin Got To Do With Genocide Studies?, Douglas Irvin-Erickson Oct 2022

Round Table (Part 5): What’S Raphaël Lemkin Got To Do With Genocide Studies?, Douglas Irvin-Erickson

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.


Full Issue 16.1 Jul 2022

Full Issue 16.1

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.


Pinpointing Patterns Of Violence: A Comparative Genocide Studies Approach To Violence Escalation In The Ukrainian Holodomor, Kristina Hook Oct 2021

Pinpointing Patterns Of Violence: A Comparative Genocide Studies Approach To Violence Escalation In The Ukrainian Holodomor, Kristina Hook

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This article utilizes the case study of the 1930s Ukrainian Holodomor, an artificially induced famine under Joseph Stalin, to advance comparative genocide studies debates regarding the nature, onset, and prevention of large-scale violence. Fieldwide debates question how to 1) distinguish genocide from other forms of large-scale violence and 2) trace genocides as unfolding processes, rather than crescendoing events. To circumvent unproductive definitional arguments, methodologies that track large-scale violence according to numerically-based thresholds have substituted for dynamics-based analyses. Able to address aspects of the genocide puzzle, these methodologies struggle to incorporate cross-cultural contextual variation or elicit ripe moments for specific, real-time …


Visions Of Greater Serbia: Local Dynamics And The Prijedor Genocide, Damir Kovačević May 2020

Visions Of Greater Serbia: Local Dynamics And The Prijedor Genocide, Damir Kovačević

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This article examines the process of genocide in the Prijedor municipality during the Bosnian civil war of the 1990s. In this article, genocide is understood as a dynamic and extraordinary phenomenon, which requires a subnational, or meso-level analysis, to capture the complexities of the case and to account for the shortcomings in the previous literature focusing mostly on the national-level. By narrowing the analysis to a more in-depth level, two explanatory factors help us understand the escalation and radicalization of violence to genocide: structural control and agency collaboration. Specifically, overwhelming political authority, territorial dominance, and a highly coordinated effort between …


Human Rights? What A Good Idea! From Universal Jurisdiction To Crime Prevention, Daniel Feierstein Dec 2019

Human Rights? What A Good Idea! From Universal Jurisdiction To Crime Prevention, Daniel Feierstein

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Over the last decades, Genocide Studies has entered in a “comfort zone.” With fellowships and support from governments or NGOs, we have developed a very comfortable environment in which the knowledge we produce about genocide prevention is neither critical nor useful. We have become trapped by assumptions we have never checked against reality and many of us have chosen to work inside the circle of those assumptions: genocide and mass violence are horrible acts committed by horrible people; we cannot stand by and do nothing; we have the responsibility to protect civilian populations and that responsibility takes the form, as …


Straining To Prevent The Rohingya Genocide: A Sociology Of Law Perspective, Katherine Southwick Dec 2018

Straining To Prevent The Rohingya Genocide: A Sociology Of Law Perspective, Katherine Southwick

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This paper analyzes the generally muted international response to the protracted plight of the Rohingya, a persecuted Muslim minority in Myanmar, from the perspective of sociology of law. The first part provides background on the Rohingya crisis and discusses relevant international legal frameworks relating to crimes against humanity and genocide. The second part adapts analytical frameworks developed by Felstiner, Abel, and Sarat on the emergence and transformation of disputes, in order to examine some of the factors that frustrate the processes of naming crimes, blaming perpetrators, and claiming rights and protection for the Rohingya minority in the international context. Work …


"I Wanted Them To Be Punished Or At Least Ask Us For Forgiveness”: Justice Interests Of Female Victim-Survivors Of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence And Their Experiences With Gacaca, Judith Rafferty Dec 2018

"I Wanted Them To Be Punished Or At Least Ask Us For Forgiveness”: Justice Interests Of Female Victim-Survivors Of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence And Their Experiences With Gacaca, Judith Rafferty

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Survivors of human rights abuses need to experience a sense of justice to support their individual recovery. Women who have experienced conflict-related sexual violence have specific justice interests that are distinct from those of survivors of other abuses. This article focuses on justice interests of Rwandan women who experienced sexual violence during the genocide in Rwanda and who had their cases tried in gacaca community courts between 2008 and 2012. The article discusses two justice interests that emerged during interviews with 23 Rwandan women about their gacaca experience. These interests include the punishment of perpetrators and perpetrators taking responsibility for …


Karma After Democratic Kampuchea: Justice Outside The Khmer Rouge Tribunal, Caroline Bennett Dec 2018

Karma After Democratic Kampuchea: Justice Outside The Khmer Rouge Tribunal, Caroline Bennett

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This article considers ways people in Cambodia narrate the Khmer Rouge regime and its genocide outside the bounds of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). Based on anthropological fieldwork, I explore how informants use ‘karma’ to discuss the genocide, and by doing so create their own understandings and lived experiences of that period of historical violence, understandings that do not fit neatly into the narrative modes created by the courts. By stepping outside the court, I consider ways of dealing with the genocide that exist beyond the international framework of transitional justice, thereby asking wider questions of …


Holding Back The Tide: Genocide Prevention In Our More Violent World, Alex J. Bellamy Dec 2018

Holding Back The Tide: Genocide Prevention In Our More Violent World, Alex J. Bellamy

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

for all the progress that was made in building barriers against genocide – and we should not shy away from acknowledging that significant progress was indeed made – we find ourselves facing a major problem. History is taking its revenge. Since the start of the ‘Arab Spring’ in early 2011, global trends in mass violence have moved consistently in the wrong direction. The number of armed conflicts have increased. Some reports suggest a six-hundred fold increase in the annual number of civilian casualties in war. Atrocity crimes are committed with increasing regularity. Perpetrators exhibit a confidence bred of impunity. Forced …


Unpacking The Mind Of Evil: A Sociological Perspective On The Role Of Intent And Motivations In Genocide, Timothy Williams, Dominik Pfeiffer Oct 2017

Unpacking The Mind Of Evil: A Sociological Perspective On The Role Of Intent And Motivations In Genocide, Timothy Williams, Dominik Pfeiffer

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

For quite some time, theories on the role of intent in genocide were conceptually frozen in polarised liberal and post-liberal, or purpose- and knowledge-based approaches, respectively. In accordance with recent criminological thought that moves beyond the narrow debate, this article develops a new sociological perspective on the role of intent in genocide. Drawing on frame analysis it is argued that intent is mainly relevant for framing genocidal action at the macro level. However, individual low-level perpetrators act from a large number of different motivations, of which ideologies of intent are only one. Others range from obedience to authority, coercion and …


Punishing Genocide: A Comparative Empirical Analysis Of Sentencing Laws And Practices At The International Criminal Tribunal For Rwanda (Ictr), Rwandan Domestic Courts, And Gacaca Courts, Barbora Hola, Hollie Nyseth Brehm Dec 2016

Punishing Genocide: A Comparative Empirical Analysis Of Sentencing Laws And Practices At The International Criminal Tribunal For Rwanda (Ictr), Rwandan Domestic Courts, And Gacaca Courts, Barbora Hola, Hollie Nyseth Brehm

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This article compares sentencing of those convicted of participation in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. With over one million people facing trial, Rwanda constitutes the world’s most comprehensive case of criminal accountability after genocide and presents an important case study of punishing genocide. Criminal courts at three different levels— international, domestic, and local—sought justice in the aftermath of the violence. In order to compare punishment at each level, we analyze an unprecedented database of sentences given by the ICTR, the Rwandan domestic courts, and Rwanda’s Gacaca courts. The analysis demonstrates that sentencing varied across the three levels—ranging from limited time …