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Horizontal Economic Inequality And Mass Atrocity Risk: A Large-Sample Empirical Inquiry, Charles H. Anderton, Roxane A. Anderton

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Our research question is: Does inter-group horizontal economic inequality elevate state-perpetrated mass atrocity risk? Theoretical perspectives in genocide studies show how economic and other forms of discrimination against ethnic or religious groups can elevate the risk of government violence against them. Among the approximately five dozen large-sample empirical studies of mass atrocity risk, only a few consider the effects of economic discrimination. Moreover, no large-sample empirical studies, to the best of our knowledge, test hypotheses related to how inter-group horizontal economic inequalities (as distinct from vertical economic inequalities based on GINI coefficients or quantile income or wealth measures) affect mass …

“Genocide Of The Soviet People”: Putin’S Russia Waging Lawfare By Means Of History, 2018–2023, Anton Weiss-Wendt

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This article exposes the political underpinnings of the term “genocide of the Soviet people,” introduced and actively promoted in Russia since 2019. By reclassifying mass crimes committed by the Nazis and their accomplices against the civilian population—specifically Slavic—as genocide, Russian courts effectively engage in adjudication of the history of the Second World War. In the process, genocide trials, ongoing in twenty-five Russian provinces and five occupied Ukrainian territories, present no new evidence or issue new indictments, thus fulfilling none of the objectives of a standard criminal investigation. The wording of the verdicts, and a comprehensive political project put in place …

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 …

Aotearoa New Zealand, The Forcible Transfer Of Tamariki And Rangatahi Māori, And The Royal Commission On Abuse In Care, David B. Macdonald

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This article investigates to what extent the forcible transfer of tamariki and rangatahi Māori (Indigenous children and youth) in Aotearoa New Zealand can be considered genocide. First, I begin by exploring contemporary genocide theory as it relates to dolus eventualis in settler colonial contexts, before engaging with precedents for recognizing Indigenous genocides established by truth commissions in Canada (2015; 2019) and Australia (1997). I then explore the history around Indigenous child removal in Aotearoa from the onset of colonization to the present day, attentive to ways in which the UN Convention can apply to the forced removal of Māori children. …

Institutional Legacies And The Decision To Commit Genocide, Stacey M. Mitchell

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Despite their striking similarities, which include population demographics, size, and a legacy of inter-group conflict, the collapse of democratization in Rwanda and Burundi in the early 1990s led to genocide in Rwanda and a different type of violence in Burundi. This study suggests that to better comprehend why risk factors lead to genocide in some cases and not others, focus must be placed on how these factors are perceived by those in power of the state experiencing them. This study introduces a model that uses Comparative Historical Analysis (CHA), process tracing, and the inclusion of a decision model built on …

Round Table (Part 2): Reflections & Questions, Sarah Federman

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

Round Table (Part 3): The Limits Of Lemkin, Scott Straus

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

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

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

Death By A Thousand Cuts? Green Tech, Traditional Knowledge, And Genocide, Regina Menachery Paulose

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Traditional Knowledge is a system of knowledge that is passed down through generations of Indigenous and Ethnic Minority Peoples throughout the world. A subset of Traditional Knowledge is Traditional Ecological Knowledge. These knowledge systems are incorporated throughout various international instruments and are considered vital to ways of life for Indigenous and Ethnic Minority Peoples. The author examines the elimination of Traditional Knowledge as a result of green technology. With discussions surrounding ways to obtain “net zero” in response to climate change, the author (re)introduces the notion that the irresponsible push for carbon zero technologies has a horrendous impact on the …

Guest Editorial: Environmental Degradation And Genocide, Emily Sample, Henry Theriault

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

Ongoing Genocides And The Need For Healing: The Cases Of Native And African Americans, Benjamin P. Bowser, Carl O. Word, Kate Shaw

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

The elimination of Native peoples and the enslavement of Africans in the U.S. more than qualify as acts of historical state sponsored genocide. A feature of both genocides is that they ended as institutional practices but have continued culturally and psychologically. The primary contemporary legacy of these genocides is racism which reinforces historical trauma and grief. Suggestions are made for how healing for Native and African Americans can begin despite ongoing racism. This includes psychological counseling for White Americans with beliefs in White supremacy. Suggestions are also made for how reconciliation can begin at the county-level between descendants of slave …

Book Review: Scorched Earth: Environmental Warfare As A Crime Against Humanity And Nature, Jeremy Ritzer

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

The subtitle of Emmanuel Kreike’s Scorched Earth foreshadows the goal of this impressive and comprehensive contribution to the field. His goal is to chip away at the Nature-Culture dichotomy that he argues drives, and limits, much of the analysis that is produced of historical, and modern, warfare. Kreike uses the concept of environcide, which he defines as “intentionally or unintentionally damaging, destroying, or rendering inaccessible environmental infrastructure”, and argues that the traditional assumptions about nature and culture in the study of warfare obscure the importance of the natural world in determining who lives and who dies. For the field of …

Book Review: An Indigenous Peoples' History Of The United States, Judith B. Cohen

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's, An Indigenous Peoples' History Of The United States, confronts the reality of settler-colonialism and genocide as foundational to the United States. It reconstructs and reframes the consensual narrative from the Native Indian perspective while exposing indoctrinated myths and stereotypes. This masterful and riveting journey provides truth and paths towards the future progress for all peoples. It is a must read and belongs in every classroom, home, library, and canon of genocide studies.

Book Review: Cultural Genocide: Law, Politics, And Global Manifestations, Jeff Benvenuto

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Are Perpetrators Under-Researched?, Christian Gudehus

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

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 …

Dossier: Uyghur Women In China’S Genocide, Rukiye Turdush, Magnus Fiskesjö

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

In genocide, both women and men suffer. However, their suffering has always been different; with men mostly subjected to torture and killings, and women mostly subjected to torture and mutilation. These differences stem primarily from the perpetrators' ideology and intention to exterminate the targeted people. Many patriarchal societies link men with blood lineage and the group’s continuation, while women embody the group’s reproductivity and dignity. In the ongoing genocide against the Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in East Turkistan, the ideology of Chinese colonialism is a root cause. It motivates the targeting of women as the means through which to …

“We Planted Rice And Killed People:” Symbiogenetic Destruction In The Cambodian Genocide, Andrew Woolford, Wanda June, Sereyvothny Um

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

In recent years, genocide scholars have given greater attention to the dangers posed by climate change for increasing the prevalence or intensity of genocide. Challenges related to forced migration, resource scarcity, famine, and other threats of the Anthropocene are identified as sources of present and future risk, especially for those committed to genocide prevention. We approach the connection between the natural and social aspects of genocide from a different angle. Our research emanates out of a North American Indigenous studies and new materialist rather than Euro-genocide studies framework, meaning we see the natural and the social (or cultural) as inseparable, …

The Impact Of Religious Beliefs, Practices, And Social Networks On Rwandan Rescue Efforts During Genocide, Nicole Fox, Hollie Nyseth Brehm, John Gasana Gasasira

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

In April 1994, in one of the most Christian nations in Africa, genocidal violence erupted culminating in the deaths of upwards of one million people. While thousands participated in mass killings, others choose not to, and rescued persecuted individuals instead. Relying on 45 in-depth interviews with individuals who rescued others in Rwanda, we demonstrate that religion is tied to rescue efforts in at least three ways: 1) through the creation of cognitive safety nets that enabled high-risk actions; 2) through religious practices that isolated individuals from the social networks of those committing the violence; and 3) through religious social networks …

Art As Atrocity Prevention: The Auschwitz Institute, Artivism, And The 2019 Venice Biennale, Kaitlin Murphy

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Although largely overlooked in genocide and atrocity prevention scholarship, the arts have a critical role to play in mitigating risk factors associated with genocide and atrocity. Grounded in analysis of "Artivism: The Atrocity Prevention Pavilion,” the Auschwitz Institute for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities’ 2019 Venice Biennale exhibition and drawing from fieldwork, interviews, and secondary research, this article explores why one of the leading NGOs working to prevent future violent conflict would choose to curate an art exhibit at the Venice Biennale and what might be accomplished through such an exhibit. Ultimately, the Artivism exhibit, in its collection …

Book Review: Remembrance And Forgiveness: Global And Interdisciplinary Perspectives On Genocide And Mass Violence, Amina Hadžiomerović

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

The volume Remembrance and Forgiveness, edited by Ajlina Karamehić-Muratović and Laura Kromják, brings together a diversity of disciplines, authors, and cultural contexts to discuss the legacies of the post-Holocaust era genocides by focusing on the (de)mobilisation of memory in seeking truth, justice, and forgiveness. The book provides a compendious overview of the social, historical, and political contexts behind the insurgencies and gives a better sense of understanding of (the obstacles to) the healing process and reconciliation in the global frame.

Arts & Literature: The Grey Zone, Sabah Carrim

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

A manifesto of the grey areas in scenarios of mass killings.

Failure To Protect?: Applying The Drri-2 Scales To Rwanda And Srebrenica, Elizabeth Mason

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This article critically reanalyses the action, or lack of action, taken by UN peacekeepers in Rwanda and Srebrenica in the 1990's. The lack of action of UN peacekeepers in Rwanda and Bosnia has long been criticised as a conscious decision made by peacekeepers to not act in defence of those being targeted but instead to act as bystanders of genocide when they had the ability to prevent acts of genocide taking place. This article re-examines the actions of the UN command under Romeo Dallaire in Rwanda and Thom Karremans in Srebrenica, Bosnia in terms of the stress-related factors which influenced …

Gender, Age, And Survival Of Italian Jews In The Holocaust, Susan Welch

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Political scientists have examined the role of gender in genocide but have largely ignored the Holocaust in these analyses. Yet, the Holocaust is the largest genocide in human history and there is much we do not know about how gender affected individual experiences. Nor do we have a very precise understanding of the impact of age in survival, beyond the common wisdom that old and young people usually did not survive. Here we examine in more detail the impact of gender and age and their intersection among the nearly 7,000 Italian Jews deported to the east, mostly to Poland and …

Making The Case For Genocide, The Forced Sterilization Of Indigenous Peoples Of Peru, Ñusta P. Carranza Ko

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Peru’s national health program Programa de Salud Reproductiva y Planificación Familiar (PSRPF) aimed to uphold women’s reproductive rights and address the scarcity in maternity related services. Despite these objectives, during PSRPF’s implementation the respect for women’s rights were undermined with the forced sterilization of women predominantly of indigenous, poor, and rural backgrounds. This study considers the forced sterilization of indigenous women as a genocide. Making the case for genocide has not been done previously with this particular case. Using the normative markers of the Genocide Convention, this study categorically sets forced sterilization victims from the state-led-policy as victims of genocide, …

Ecocide Is Genocide: Decolonizing The Definition Of Genocide, Lauren J. Eichler

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

I demonstrate how the destruction of the land, water, and nonhuman beings of the Americas constitutes genocide according to Indigenous metaphysics and through analysis of the decimation of the American buffalo. In Genocide Studies, the destruction of nonhuman beings and nature is typically treated as a separate, but related type of phenomenon—ecocide, the destruction of nonhuman nature. In this article I follow in the footsteps of Native American and First Nations scholars to argue that ecocide and the genocide of Indigenous peoples are inextricably linked and are even constitutive of the same act. I argue that if justice is to …

Chomsky And Genocide, Adam Jones

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Noam Chomsky may justly be considered the most important public intellectual alive, and the most significant of the post-World War Two era. Despite his scholarly contributions to linguistics, at least three generations know him primarily for his political writings and activism, voicing a left-radical, humanist critique of US foreign policy and other subjects.

Given that a human-rights discourse is prominent in Chomsky’s political writing, and given that genocide-related controversies have sometimes swirled around him, it is worthwhile to consider the overall place and framing of genocide in his published output. The present paper undertakes such an inquiry. It employs a …

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 …

Cases Studied In Genocide Studies And Prevention And Journal Of Genocide Research And Implications For The Field Of Genocide Studies, Jeffrey Bachman

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

The adoption of the Genocide Convention in 1948 was accompanied by the emergence of genocide as a field of study, first in the form of Holocaust Studies, followed by Genocide Studies, then Comparative Genocide Studies and, most recently, Critical Genocide Studies. Over the last 20-30 years, the field of genocide studies has greatly expanded. According to Alexander Hinton, “As the outlines of the field emerge more clearly, the time is right to engage in critical reflections about the state of the field.” This article seeks to enhance the field of genocide studies by answering Hinton’s call for reflective analysis. It …