A moment of reflection and innovation in perpetrator studies

Abstract

This edited volume is a welcome addition to the growing body of monographs, edited volumes, and articles on perpetrator studies. It brings together many interesting chapters that individually provide innovation and insight on particular topics or issues, such as questions of methodology and ethics, perspectives on perpetration as a process, the complexity of grey zones, the role of ideology, and new approaches to studying international criminal trials. In its entirety it also contributes to a more general reflection on where we are in perpetrator studies today. While the three editors all have a background in (international) criminal law and criminology, the volume brings together authors from various different disciplinary backgrounds, particularly sociology, anthropology, (oral) history, and political science.1 The volume is divided into five parts and begins with an historical overview of the study of perpetrators that succinctly demonstrates how the field has broadened considerably in terms of disciplinary perspectives (from history and psychology to a plethora of further disciplines) and how it has incorporated perspectives from many more cases beyond the Holocaust (Alette Smeulers). The second chapter (Alette Smeulers, Barbora Holá, Maartje Weerdesteijn) takes stock of “what we know” in perpetrator studies today, admirably condensing the state of the art regarding factors that cause people to become perpetrators, differentiating between dispositional, situational, and societal explanations and adding process-based explanations that focus on insights from terrorism literature. In addition, the chapter differentiates in a systematic and useful manner between the methodological approaches used. This chapter is an excellent synthesis of the state of the art, but