Abstract
As raised in Chapter 1, IR scholars are not necessarily well versed in the definitional debates that surround genocide. This is neatly captured in Tim Dunne and Daniela Kroslak’s claim, ‘The consensus supporting the Genocide Convention masks important disputes around issues of intent, scale, and identity of victim-group.’1 In other words, IR scholars should not simply rely on the Genocide Convention in order to gain an understanding of what constitutes genocide because the legal definition masks definitional complexities regarding intent, scale and group identity (to name just a few). For example, regarding group identity, since the legal definition only identifies national, ethnic, racial, and religious groups, this means that if a political, economic, or gendered group is destroyed in its entirety then this cannot legally be defined as genocide.2 At the same time, this example reveals a fourth debate which Dunne and Kroslak fail to mention: what constitutes destroy? As shall be discussed, Raphael Lemkin, the man who coined the word genocide and ‘the father of the Genocide Convention’, did not view destruction as synonymous with mass murder and instead put forward a much broader understanding of how groups can be destroyed.3 Such examples illustrate that if one digs a little deeper into the question of how genocide should be defined, one is faced with a variety of competing interdisciplinary perspectives.
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Notes
T. Dunne, and D. Kroslak, ‘Genocide: Knowing what it is that we want to Remember, or Forget, or Forgive’ in K. Booth (ed.), The Kosovo Tragedy: The Human Rights Dimensions (London: Frank Cass, 2001), 41.
For example B. V. Schaack, ‘The Crime of Political Genocide: Repairing the Genocide Convention’s Blind Spot’, The Yale Law Journal (106, 7, 1997, 2259–91).
R. Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress (New Jersey: Lawbook Exchange Ltd, 2005)
D. Moses, ‘Raphael Lemkin, Culture, and the Concept of Genocide’, in A. D. Moses and D. Bloxham, The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010)
J. Cooper, Raphael Lemkin and the Struggle for the Genocide Convention (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
T. Elder, ‘What You See Before your Eyes: Documenting Raphael Lemkin’s Life by Exploring his Archival Papers 1990–1959’, Journal of Genocide Research (7, 4, 2005, 25–55).
S. L. Jacobs, ‘The Papers of Raphael Lemkin: A First Look’, Journal of Genocide Research (1, 1, 1999, 105–14).
M. Shaw, What is Genocide? (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007), 3.
J. Semelin, Purify and Destroy, the Political uses of Massacre and Genocide translated from the French by C. Schoch (London: Hurst and Thompson, 2007), 21.
E. D. Weitz, A Century of Genocide, Utopias of Race and Nation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 10.
R Chalk, ‘Redefining Genocide’, in G. J. Andreopoulos (ed.), Genocide, Conceptual andHistorical Dimensions (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), 47.
L. May. Crimes Against Humanity, A Normative Account (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)
K.J. Campbell, Genocide and the Global Village (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001) 21.
IR scholars should be all too familiar with the ‘problem of other minds’ regarding the complexity of deconstructing decision-making in an anarchical realm, M. Hollis and S. Smith, Explaining and Understanding International Relations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 171–6.
G. Prunier Darfur, Ambiguous Genocide (London: Hurst and Company, 2005).
A. D. Waal, Famine that kills: Darfur, Sudan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
B. B. Green, ‘Stalinist Tenor and the Question of Genocide: The Great Famine’, in Alan S. Rosenbaum (ed.), Is the Holocaust Unique? Perspectives on Comparative Genocide? (Oxford: Westview Press, 2001)
L. Kuper, Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century (London: Yale University Press, 1982), 32.
See B. Valentino, Final Solutions, Mass Killing and Genocide in the Twentieth Century (New York: Cornell University Press, 2004), 12.
R. Gellately and B. Kiernan (eds), The Spectre of Genocide, Mass Murder in a Historical Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 15–16.
A. Jones, Genocide, A Comprehensive Introduction (New York: Routledge, 2006), 21.
H. Hirsch, Anti-Genocide, Building An American Movement to Prevent Genocide (London: Praeger, 2002), 6.
W. Schabas, ‘Whither Genocide? The International Court of Justice Finally Pronounces’, Journal of Genocide Research (9, 2, 2007, 183–92)
L. May, Crimes Against Humanity, A Normative Account (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 146.
I. L. Horowitz, Taking Lives, Genocide and State Power (London: Transaction, 2002).
M. Levene, Genocide in the Age of the Nation State, I: The Meaning of Genocide (London: I. B. Tauris, 2005), 77.
B. Harff and T. R. Gurr, ‘Toward Empirical Theory of Genocides and Politicides: Identification and Measurement of Cases since 1945’, International Studies Quarterly (32, 3, 1988, 359–71).
For an analysis of alternative terms, H. Huttenbach, ‘Towards a Conceptual Definition of Genocide’, The Journal of Genocide Research (4, 2, 2002, 167–76).
S. Katz, The Holocaust in Historical Context, 1, The Holocaust and Mass Death before the Modern Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 131.
For a broad discussion on this debate, A. S. Rosenbaum, Is the Holocaust Unique? (Oxford: Westview Press, 2001).
O. Bartov, Mirrors of Destruction, War, Genocide and Modern Identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press: 2000), 6.
A. Hinton, (ed.), Genocide, an Anthropological Reader (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2002), 5.
I am drawing on two works by Hinton as I make this point. For a discussion on the Manufacture of Difference see Hinton’s introduction in Genocide, an Anthropological Reader, esp. 9–12. For a discussion on Annihilating Difference see A. L. Hinton (ed.), Annihilating Difference, The Anthropology of Genocide (London: University of California Press, 2002).
K.J. Roth, ‘Genocide and the “Logic” of Racism’, in J, K. Roth (ed.), Genocide and Human Rights, a Philosophical Guide (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005)
B. Harff and T. R. Gurr, ‘Toward Empirical Theory of Genocides and Politicides: Identification and Measurement of Cases since 1945’, International Studies Quarterly (vol. 32, 3, 1988, 359–71).
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© 2013 Adrian Gallagher
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Gallagher, A. (2013). Words Matter: Genocide and the Definitional Debate. In: Genocide and its Threat to Contemporary International Order. New Security Challenges Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137280268_2
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