Genocide Studies

Genocide developed as an area of study in the 1970s as part of a larger movement of rewriting the curriculum to include subjects traditionally left out and de-emphasized, from slavery and colonialism to labor and women's history, and also as an outgrowth of scholarship and interest about the World War II Holocaust. From the destruction of indigenous peoples to the Armenian genocide and Nazi genocides, new research challenged traditional state narratives and uncovered complex, destructive processes, such as patterns of intentional state design and execution, a range of perpetrators and accomplices, ongoing denial, the role of modernity, and the lack of accountability and of justice. From the 1990s on, interest in genocide has multiplied, partly in response to recognition of how often and many human lives were destroyed in post-1945 mass-murder of targeted groups in Cambodia, East Timor, Guatemala, Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur, and other states. While some scholars concentrate on understanding one genocidal event, genocide studies emphasizes a multidisciplinary, comparative approach that aims to break down hierarchies of victimization and to analyze recurrent patterns and highlight issues of recognition, restitution, and prevention.

The term genocide (genus people and cide killing) was coined in 1944 by Polish Jewish jurist and refugee, Raphael Lemkin, to describe what British Prime Minister Winston Churchill called the “crime without a name”; that is, the Nazi atrocities against Jews and other civilian populations during World War II. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, which Lemkin played a crucial role in lobbying for, was approved by the U.N. General Assembly on December 9, 1948. Article II defines genocide as a crime that

A series of scholarly debates and definitions emerged in response to the limits and vagueness of the Genocide Convention, the exclusion of political and cultural groups in the definition, and lack of specific justice and prevention mechanisms. For example, how is genocide distinguished from ethnic cleansing, politicide, or democide, a term invented by political [Page 613]scientist Rudolf Rummel in Death by Government of 1994, emphasizing state-sponsored mass killings of civilians by governments in the former Soviet Union, China, and elsewhere? What events are to be included or excluded as genocidal, and what are the moral and legal implications? How is intent defined and proven, and what does this say about the calculated rationale behind such mass international crimes? Which patterns and methods such as sexual violence recur? What role do elites play and which ideologies such as nationalism and racism promote genocidal societies?

Following Leo Kuper's work, notably Genocide: Its Political Uses in the Twentieth Century of 1981, a small number of academics emphasized a comparative, multidisciplinary approach to studying mass destruction. In 1994, the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) was founded and its biennial conferences have provided international networks for scholarship and debate. In 2006, IAGS initiated Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal. The Journal of Genocide Scholars was founded in 2002 and is now the official publication of the European Network of Genocide Scholars (ENOGS). In recent decades, innovative courses on genocide have been introduced in both the humanities and social sciences, particularly in law and international relations. New studies and approaches have multiplied, from international human rights attorney William A. Schabas's Genocide in International Law: The Crime of Crimes (2000) and historian Eric D. Weitz's A Century of Genocide: Utopias of Race and Nation (2003) to anthropologist Alex Hinton's Why Did They Kill? Cambodia in the Shadow of Genocide (2004). The Zoryan Institute at the University of Toronto, Canada, offers a unique summer course, Genocide and Human Rights, that brings together a group of genocide specialists and students from around the world for 2 weeks of intensive, multidisciplinary study with the goals of educating about the Armenian genocide and other genocides and fostering a new generation of genocide scholars.

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