Pub Date : 2022-01-03DOI: 10.1080/14623528.2021.2022271
Mark Condos
ABSTRACT In February 2014, an amateur archaeological team unearthed thousands of bones and other remains from an old well in the town of Ajnala, located in the Indian state of Punjab. These remains are believed to belong to 282 Indian sepoys who were summarily executed en masse on 1 August 1857 under the orders of Deputy Commissioner Frederic Cooper, during the height of the Indian Uprising of 1857. The discovery of the bodies has not only reignited fierce debates about the violent history of the British Empire in India, but also offers an interesting glimpse into some of the ways that Indian history and national identity are currently being remade and negotiated in relation to the colonial past. This article is about the contested historical narrations, memories, and ongoing efforts to commemorate the Ajnala Massacre. It reveals how the history and public memory of colonial violence remain poorly understood, and the ways that calls for the recognition of previously forgotten, absent, or erased memories can prompt difficult and highly politicized discussions about the meaning of history, identity, and politics.
{"title":"The Ajnala Massacre of 1857 and the Politics of Colonial Violence and Commemoration in Contemporary India","authors":"Mark Condos","doi":"10.1080/14623528.2021.2022271","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14623528.2021.2022271","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In February 2014, an amateur archaeological team unearthed thousands of bones and other remains from an old well in the town of Ajnala, located in the Indian state of Punjab. These remains are believed to belong to 282 Indian sepoys who were summarily executed en masse on 1 August 1857 under the orders of Deputy Commissioner Frederic Cooper, during the height of the Indian Uprising of 1857. The discovery of the bodies has not only reignited fierce debates about the violent history of the British Empire in India, but also offers an interesting glimpse into some of the ways that Indian history and national identity are currently being remade and negotiated in relation to the colonial past. This article is about the contested historical narrations, memories, and ongoing efforts to commemorate the Ajnala Massacre. It reveals how the history and public memory of colonial violence remain poorly understood, and the ways that calls for the recognition of previously forgotten, absent, or erased memories can prompt difficult and highly politicized discussions about the meaning of history, identity, and politics.","PeriodicalId":46849,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Genocide Research","volume":"24 1","pages":"568 - 585"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48321955","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-22DOI: 10.1080/14623528.2021.2003990
C. Renshaw
ABSTRACT Substantiality is an important but misunderstood part of the concept of genocide. One problem is that substantiality holds different meanings within law and sociology. Legally, substantiality is connected to the difficulty of proving there is “intention to destroy” in the absence of a specific plan. Substantiality in this sense is a marker of the level of death and destruction required to support an inference of intent. Sociologically, substantiality is connected to popular understandings of genocide that link the gravity of the crime to the volume of destruction. Substantiality in this latter sense has been problematized by scholars who point out that genocide does not necessarily entail a greater level of harm and destruction than other atrocities, which might fall under the label of war crimes or crimes against humanity. This article examines the concept of substantiality with a view to illuminating the tension that exists between legal and sociological understandings of genocide. The article uses the alleged genocide of the Rohingya in Myanmar as a case study to demonstrate the complexity and contradictions of legal and sociological applications of the concept of substantiality. The article concludes that problems with substantiality reflect deeper problems with the recognition and articulation of the particular wrong inherent in the crime of genocide.
{"title":"The Numbers Game: Substantiality and the Definition of Genocide","authors":"C. Renshaw","doi":"10.1080/14623528.2021.2003990","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14623528.2021.2003990","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Substantiality is an important but misunderstood part of the concept of genocide. One problem is that substantiality holds different meanings within law and sociology. Legally, substantiality is connected to the difficulty of proving there is “intention to destroy” in the absence of a specific plan. Substantiality in this sense is a marker of the level of death and destruction required to support an inference of intent. Sociologically, substantiality is connected to popular understandings of genocide that link the gravity of the crime to the volume of destruction. Substantiality in this latter sense has been problematized by scholars who point out that genocide does not necessarily entail a greater level of harm and destruction than other atrocities, which might fall under the label of war crimes or crimes against humanity. This article examines the concept of substantiality with a view to illuminating the tension that exists between legal and sociological understandings of genocide. The article uses the alleged genocide of the Rohingya in Myanmar as a case study to demonstrate the complexity and contradictions of legal and sociological applications of the concept of substantiality. The article concludes that problems with substantiality reflect deeper problems with the recognition and articulation of the particular wrong inherent in the crime of genocide.","PeriodicalId":46849,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Genocide Research","volume":"25 1","pages":"195 - 215"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2021-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43189755","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-28DOI: 10.1080/14623528.2021.1992924
R. Reid
“Ethiopia” has long been a violent proposition. Or, to put it a little more precisely, the exercises in state-formation and imperialism that have given rise to Ethiopia in its modern form have long been underpinned by violence, often of an extreme kind. This is not to essentialize Ethiopian national identity or Ethiopian culture, which of course are complex and multi-layered; after all, it can be safely argued – in the tradition of everyone from Thomas Hobbes, through Max Weber, to Charles Tilly – that all such political projects are rooted in violence, and that all states (and certainly empires) are defined by their deployment of extreme force against an array of “others.” That, from a certain point of view, is their entire point. However, it is to argue that, profoundly disturbing though the reports recently coming out of Tigray are, such atrocities are neither anomalous nor without precedent. Violence has long attended political turmoil in Ethiopia. It has been the essential ingredient in the making and remaking of the Solomonic empire, particularly in the quest to dominate troubled provinces and peripheries, and has been both cause and effect of ideological struggle. Atrocity has routinely been deployed in the pursuit to protect – and project – the hegemonic core in ethnic, cultural, and religious terms. Cycles of expansion and disintegration, and episodic challenges to the centre, have involved large-scale violence against ordinary people. Two broad premises need to be established at the outset. The first is that we are concerned here primarily with violence against “civilians” or “non-combatants” – historically an ambiguous category, admittedly – and with the infliction of violence against communities or even entire populations with no immediate, explicitly military target in sight. There is an important distinction to be drawn between the military confrontations on appointed battlefields, which are like rivets in the Ethiopian historical edifice, and the killing of people. Conflict between armed groups gives rise to its own peculiar cruelties, but that is not our central concern here. The second premise is that Ethiopia is at root and in essence an empire, and that Ethiopian imperialism – like every other variation of it – is an intrinsically violent process. It is not exclusively violent – again, no imperialism is that – but at its core is the physical harm inflicted on communities of people identified
{"title":"Atrocity in Ethiopian History","authors":"R. Reid","doi":"10.1080/14623528.2021.1992924","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14623528.2021.1992924","url":null,"abstract":"“Ethiopia” has long been a violent proposition. Or, to put it a little more precisely, the exercises in state-formation and imperialism that have given rise to Ethiopia in its modern form have long been underpinned by violence, often of an extreme kind. This is not to essentialize Ethiopian national identity or Ethiopian culture, which of course are complex and multi-layered; after all, it can be safely argued – in the tradition of everyone from Thomas Hobbes, through Max Weber, to Charles Tilly – that all such political projects are rooted in violence, and that all states (and certainly empires) are defined by their deployment of extreme force against an array of “others.” That, from a certain point of view, is their entire point. However, it is to argue that, profoundly disturbing though the reports recently coming out of Tigray are, such atrocities are neither anomalous nor without precedent. Violence has long attended political turmoil in Ethiopia. It has been the essential ingredient in the making and remaking of the Solomonic empire, particularly in the quest to dominate troubled provinces and peripheries, and has been both cause and effect of ideological struggle. Atrocity has routinely been deployed in the pursuit to protect – and project – the hegemonic core in ethnic, cultural, and religious terms. Cycles of expansion and disintegration, and episodic challenges to the centre, have involved large-scale violence against ordinary people. Two broad premises need to be established at the outset. The first is that we are concerned here primarily with violence against “civilians” or “non-combatants” – historically an ambiguous category, admittedly – and with the infliction of violence against communities or even entire populations with no immediate, explicitly military target in sight. There is an important distinction to be drawn between the military confrontations on appointed battlefields, which are like rivets in the Ethiopian historical edifice, and the killing of people. Conflict between armed groups gives rise to its own peculiar cruelties, but that is not our central concern here. The second premise is that Ethiopia is at root and in essence an empire, and that Ethiopian imperialism – like every other variation of it – is an intrinsically violent process. It is not exclusively violent – again, no imperialism is that – but at its core is the physical harm inflicted on communities of people identified","PeriodicalId":46849,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Genocide Research","volume":"24 1","pages":"97 - 108"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46220879","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-28DOI: 10.1080/14623528.2021.1992928
Jacob Wiebel
The Ethiopian revolution of 1974 resulted in the establishment of a military regime, the Derg, that oversaw and orchestrated numerous atrocities during its seventeen years in power. Some of these were part of the “Red Terror” that violently repressed all urban opposition, whereas others were associated with counter-insurgency measures against rural guerrillas. While a new generation of scholars is re-evaluating the history and legacies of the Ethiopian revolution, the period’s atrocities are yet to be adequately examined in relation to comparative and conceptual discussions on genocides and crimes against humanity. In pursuit of a greater integration of Ethiopian historiography with the field of genocide studies, this forum contribution examines three essential conditions and features of the Red Terror in critical dialogue with questions, methods, and insights developed in work on other case studies. It focuses on the dynamics of dehumanization, the role of a fear-filled “atrocity environment,” and the evolution of new violence-facilitating organizational structures, arguing the need for a global history as well as for a comparative approach. Ethiopia’s unprecedented social and political revolution of 1974 promised to dismantle much of the structural and cultural violence on which the country’s imperial order had been founded. That the revolutionary process would itself entail significant direct violence was soon understood, accepted, at times even celebrated by all revolutionary groups. The result was a network of rebellions, counter-insurgency operations, reigns of state terror and border wars that over the following seventeen years generated numerous crimes against humanity and cost hundreds of thousands of lives. The first notable massacre following the revolution occurred on the night of 22 November 1974. Members of the Derg – the fractious and embattled military junta that had claimed state power just months before – assassinated 59 prominent members of the imperial family and of the ancièn regime. This first high-profile atrocity was a harbinger
{"title":"Atrocities in Revolutionary Ethiopia, 1974-79: Towards a Comparative Analysis","authors":"Jacob Wiebel","doi":"10.1080/14623528.2021.1992928","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14623528.2021.1992928","url":null,"abstract":"The Ethiopian revolution of 1974 resulted in the establishment of a military regime, the Derg, that oversaw and orchestrated numerous atrocities during its seventeen years in power. Some of these were part of the “Red Terror” that violently repressed all urban opposition, whereas others were associated with counter-insurgency measures against rural guerrillas. While a new generation of scholars is re-evaluating the history and legacies of the Ethiopian revolution, the period’s atrocities are yet to be adequately examined in relation to comparative and conceptual discussions on genocides and crimes against humanity. In pursuit of a greater integration of Ethiopian historiography with the field of genocide studies, this forum contribution examines three essential conditions and features of the Red Terror in critical dialogue with questions, methods, and insights developed in work on other case studies. It focuses on the dynamics of dehumanization, the role of a fear-filled “atrocity environment,” and the evolution of new violence-facilitating organizational structures, arguing the need for a global history as well as for a comparative approach. Ethiopia’s unprecedented social and political revolution of 1974 promised to dismantle much of the structural and cultural violence on which the country’s imperial order had been founded. That the revolutionary process would itself entail significant direct violence was soon understood, accepted, at times even celebrated by all revolutionary groups. The result was a network of rebellions, counter-insurgency operations, reigns of state terror and border wars that over the following seventeen years generated numerous crimes against humanity and cost hundreds of thousands of lives. The first notable massacre following the revolution occurred on the night of 22 November 1974. Members of the Derg – the fractious and embattled military junta that had claimed state power just months before – assassinated 59 prominent members of the imperial family and of the ancièn regime. This first high-profile atrocity was a harbinger","PeriodicalId":46849,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Genocide Research","volume":"24 1","pages":"134 - 147"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48921747","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-28DOI: 10.1080/14623528.2021.1992927
I. L. Campbell
The invasion of Ethiopia launched in October 1935 by the Fascist government of Benito Mussolini was marked by atrocities that continued in one form or another throughout the subsequent military occupation, until the occupying army was overcome by a combination of British Commonwealth forces and Ethiopian partisans (known as Patriots) in 1941. However, while the Fascist and Nazi expansionist invasions conducted in Europe from 1939 onwards are well known, Fascism’s first foreign invasion was less well documented, and is not so widely known. Yet there is much to be learned from a study of the methods of violent conquest and counter-insurgency that Fascist Italy employed in Ethiopia, for they inspired, and served as blueprints for, much of what was to follow. Not only was Ethiopia the crucible for the techniques of “total war” and civilian repression employed – often by the same military commanders – in Yugoslavia; but the methods of conquest pioneered by the Italians and their attempts to create a racist state also inspired Hitler, who, holding Il Duce in high esteem, had modelled his Nazi movement largely on Italy’s Fascism. Based on research conducted by the author in Ethiopia over a period of three decades, supplemented by primary and secondary sources, this paper discusses the objectives of the invasion, identifies the principal types of gratuitous violence perpetrated by the forces of invasion and occupation against both combatants and non-combatants, and proposes explanations for the remarkable nature and scale of atrocities committed.
{"title":"Italian Atrocities in Ethiopia: An Enquiry into the Violence of Fascism's First Military Invasion and Occupation","authors":"I. L. Campbell","doi":"10.1080/14623528.2021.1992927","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14623528.2021.1992927","url":null,"abstract":"The invasion of Ethiopia launched in October 1935 by the Fascist government of Benito Mussolini was marked by atrocities that continued in one form or another throughout the subsequent military occupation, until the occupying army was overcome by a combination of British Commonwealth forces and Ethiopian partisans (known as Patriots) in 1941. However, while the Fascist and Nazi expansionist invasions conducted in Europe from 1939 onwards are well known, Fascism’s first foreign invasion was less well documented, and is not so widely known. Yet there is much to be learned from a study of the methods of violent conquest and counter-insurgency that Fascist Italy employed in Ethiopia, for they inspired, and served as blueprints for, much of what was to follow. Not only was Ethiopia the crucible for the techniques of “total war” and civilian repression employed – often by the same military commanders – in Yugoslavia; but the methods of conquest pioneered by the Italians and their attempts to create a racist state also inspired Hitler, who, holding Il Duce in high esteem, had modelled his Nazi movement largely on Italy’s Fascism. Based on research conducted by the author in Ethiopia over a period of three decades, supplemented by primary and secondary sources, this paper discusses the objectives of the invasion, identifies the principal types of gratuitous violence perpetrated by the forces of invasion and occupation against both combatants and non-combatants, and proposes explanations for the remarkable nature and scale of atrocities committed.","PeriodicalId":46849,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Genocide Research","volume":"24 1","pages":"119 - 133"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48249017","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-28DOI: 10.1080/14623528.2021.1992920
R. Ibreck, A. de Waal
Genocide scholars have largely neglected Ethiopian histories of atrocious violence, with rare exceptions. This looks set to change given the violent conflict and spiralling human rights violations over the past year, under the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. In July 2020, the Ethiopian government cracked down on protests in Oromia region with extrajudicial killings and mass arrests. Soon afterwards, amid rising political instability, regional militias targeted local minorities in what was described as “ethnic-cleansing.” Then, in early November 2020, Tigray erupted into armed conflict, following a dispute between the regional government, led by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and the federal government, and leading to intense warfare and violence against civilians in the region and beyond. Over the months since, various armed forces – principally the Ethiopian National Defence Forces (ENDF) and the Eritrean Defence Forces (EDF) – have perpetrated massacres, sexual violence and forced starvation likely to amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, or possibly crimes constitutive of genocide. There is bound to be a surge in scholarly responses to these atrocities in Ethiopia, of the kind we witnessed (and contributed to) after the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 and the atrocities in Darfur in 2003-05. Such an explosion of interest is not without its problems. Western scholars were overly-represented in early debates on Rwanda and Darfur – not least because small communities of domestic scholars were devastated, lacking resources, or still at risk. New country experts and comparativists were nominally “outsiders,” but they could not automatically side-step the malign politics. In Rwanda, some scholars fuelled the “politicization of even the most basic concepts and research questions.” In Darfur, the international advocacy movement promoted the framing of the atrocities as “genocide” with the explicit intention of provoking an international military intervention,
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Pub Date : 2021-10-28DOI: 10.1080/14623528.2021.1992925
Mohammed Hassen
The Oromo and the Amhara people have lived as neighbours in the region of Shawa, Ethiopia at least since the fourteenth century, if not earlier. This article deals with genocidal violence during the conquest of the Oromo over the course of the nineteenth century. The process of conquest started during the long reign of Sahle Sellassie (1813–48) the leader, who first called himself Negus (king) of the small kingdom of north Shawa. He started systematic attacks against the Oromo communities to his south and east. The records show that on an annual basis throughout his reign, the king conducted three raids against Oromos, for the purpose of killing people, capturing slaves and cattle, and burning crops and houses. Additionally, Oromo “became fair ‘game’ for Amhara children to kill, loot, and pillage and thereby learn the art of warfare.” In the popular culture of the Amhara kingdom, the Oromo were depicted as enemies whose killing was the source of great joy such that young Amhara warrior’s head would be “lavished”with “shariti” (single ornament) and “shamme” (glass beads on his neck) as marks of bravery and honour. In the words of Asma Giyorgis, an Amhara historian regarded as objective:
{"title":"Genocidal Conquest, Plunder of Resources and Dehumanization of the Oromo in Ethiopia","authors":"Mohammed Hassen","doi":"10.1080/14623528.2021.1992925","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14623528.2021.1992925","url":null,"abstract":"The Oromo and the Amhara people have lived as neighbours in the region of Shawa, Ethiopia at least since the fourteenth century, if not earlier. This article deals with genocidal violence during the conquest of the Oromo over the course of the nineteenth century. The process of conquest started during the long reign of Sahle Sellassie (1813–48) the leader, who first called himself Negus (king) of the small kingdom of north Shawa. He started systematic attacks against the Oromo communities to his south and east. The records show that on an annual basis throughout his reign, the king conducted three raids against Oromos, for the purpose of killing people, capturing slaves and cattle, and burning crops and houses. Additionally, Oromo “became fair ‘game’ for Amhara children to kill, loot, and pillage and thereby learn the art of warfare.” In the popular culture of the Amhara kingdom, the Oromo were depicted as enemies whose killing was the source of great joy such that young Amhara warrior’s head would be “lavished”with “shariti” (single ornament) and “shamme” (glass beads on his neck) as marks of bravery and honour. In the words of Asma Giyorgis, an Amhara historian regarded as objective:","PeriodicalId":46849,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Genocide Research","volume":"24 1","pages":"109 - 118"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41560262","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-13DOI: 10.1080/14623528.2021.1986273
Brendan J. Wright
ABSTRACT This article explores the underdeveloped linkages between the South Korean government’s mass killings of “leftist” opponents during the civil war era (1948–1953) and kinship killings. Specifically, I examine the significance of “taesal” – the proxy killing of suspected leftist rebels’ family members. I argue that rather than being merely indiscriminate acts of state terror, these killings conformed to highly ritualistic patterns in which the family unit – in both symbol and reality – was targeted for destruction as an extension of rightist political consolidation. An investigation of this phenomenon, I argue, provides us with a window into seeing the ways in which the political ideology was biologized in the form of gendered and exterminatory violence directed at kindship relations.
{"title":"Kinship Killings, Taesal and Biologized State Violence During the Korean Civil War","authors":"Brendan J. Wright","doi":"10.1080/14623528.2021.1986273","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14623528.2021.1986273","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article explores the underdeveloped linkages between the South Korean government’s mass killings of “leftist” opponents during the civil war era (1948–1953) and kinship killings. Specifically, I examine the significance of “taesal” – the proxy killing of suspected leftist rebels’ family members. I argue that rather than being merely indiscriminate acts of state terror, these killings conformed to highly ritualistic patterns in which the family unit – in both symbol and reality – was targeted for destruction as an extension of rightist political consolidation. An investigation of this phenomenon, I argue, provides us with a window into seeing the ways in which the political ideology was biologized in the form of gendered and exterminatory violence directed at kindship relations.","PeriodicalId":46849,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Genocide Research","volume":"25 1","pages":"157 - 171"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44308088","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-08DOI: 10.1080/14623528.2021.1985809
A. Alexander
ABSTRACT This paper reviews a body of recent literature that interrogates the development and deployment of the contemporary regime of political violence. This literature includes Samuel Moyn's account of the emergence and dominance of the humanitarian paradigm and Francine Hirsch, Giovanni Mantilla and Boyd van Dijk's diplomatic histories of the creation of the central provisions of this paradigm. It also encompasses Dirk Moses, Benjamin Meiches and Sinja Graf's examinations of genocide and universal crime, Neve Gordon and Nicola Perugini's Human Shields, and Yagil Levy's Whose Life is Worth More? This is a diverse literature but, considered together, it traverses the creation of the legal categories, the cultural values and the ethical concerns that shape the current regime. It shows how these laws and values are created through political and cultural negotiations and how they become, themselves, political mechanisms that erase or legitimize certain forms of violence. By doing so, these works reveal the contingency and dangers of the current paradigm of ethical violence. They also, this review argues, show how difficult it is to escape from this paradigm.
{"title":"The Ethics of Violence: Recent Literature on the Creation of the Contemporary Regime of Law and War","authors":"A. Alexander","doi":"10.1080/14623528.2021.1985809","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14623528.2021.1985809","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper reviews a body of recent literature that interrogates the development and deployment of the contemporary regime of political violence. This literature includes Samuel Moyn's account of the emergence and dominance of the humanitarian paradigm and Francine Hirsch, Giovanni Mantilla and Boyd van Dijk's diplomatic histories of the creation of the central provisions of this paradigm. It also encompasses Dirk Moses, Benjamin Meiches and Sinja Graf's examinations of genocide and universal crime, Neve Gordon and Nicola Perugini's Human Shields, and Yagil Levy's Whose Life is Worth More? This is a diverse literature but, considered together, it traverses the creation of the legal categories, the cultural values and the ethical concerns that shape the current regime. It shows how these laws and values are created through political and cultural negotiations and how they become, themselves, political mechanisms that erase or legitimize certain forms of violence. By doing so, these works reveal the contingency and dangers of the current paradigm of ethical violence. They also, this review argues, show how difficult it is to escape from this paradigm.","PeriodicalId":46849,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Genocide Research","volume":"25 1","pages":"235 - 251"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45574715","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-06DOI: 10.1080/14623528.2021.1987039
Christian Gudehus
ABSTRACT It seems to have become an unquestioned standard in genocide research to abbreviate a very limited number of mainly social psychological studies to help explain that individuals commit violent acts in the context of collective violence. This exemplary review of adaptations of Solomon E. Asch’s studies on independence and conformity hopes to reveal some fundamental problems of supposedly transdisciplinary genocide research and beyond: (1) Asch's originally very elaborate arguments are seriously abbreviated; (2) especially the scope of Asch’s experimental research is not sufficiently contextualized as (3) are his psychological findings, a problem that (4) can be associated with a lack of references to the discussions in the disciplines consulted. These observations do not merely apply to the case under discussion but hint at fundamental problems of inter- or transdisciplinary research on violence.
在种族灭绝研究中，简化数量非常有限的主要是社会心理学的研究，以帮助解释个人在集体暴力的背景下实施暴力行为，似乎已经成为一种毋庸置疑的标准。这篇对所罗门·e·阿希(Solomon E. Asch)关于独立与从众的研究的改编的典范性评论，希望揭示一些被认为是跨学科的种族灭绝研究及其以外的基本问题:(1)阿希原本非常详尽的论点被严重地缩短了;(2)特别是Asch的实验研究的范围没有充分的背景化(3)是他的心理学发现，这个问题(4)可能与缺乏参考学科的讨论有关。这些观察结果不仅适用于正在讨论的案件，而且暗示了关于暴力的跨学科或跨学科研究的基本问题。
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