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Published in:
What Is Genocide? Read chapter Read first chapter

2021 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

2. How Can We Understand Genocide?

Author : William R. Pruitt

Published in: An Introduction to the Criminology of Genocide

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

Trying to understand why genocide occurs is crucial to a full understanding of the crime and hopefully its prevention. There is no single reason why genocide might occur; there are many reasons and many possible explanations for it. This chapter looks at the different academic explanations for genocide from a variety of disciplines. Ideally, after exploring the myriad theories one can look for common factors among the disciplines that might help explain how we understand genocide.
These understandings come from different disciplines but feed into the recent criminological theories of genocide. Since criminology is an interdisciplinary field it is easy to connect these diverse fields to criminology and explain what aspects of these fields could be incorporated into a general criminological theory of genocide.

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Footnotes
1
Salih, Khaled. (1995). Anfal: The Kurdish genocide in Iraq. Digest of Middle East Studies, 4(2), 24–39: 26–27.
 
2
See Goldensohn, Leon (2004). The Nuremberg interviews: An American psychiatrist’s conversations with the defendants and witnesses. New York: Knopf.
 
3
Durkheim, Emile (1938). “The normal and the pathological,” in Rules of Sociological Method. New York: The Free Press.
 
4
Fournet, Caroline (2007). The crime of destruction and the law of genocide: Their impact on collective memory. Hampshire, UK: Ashgate.
 
5
Alonzo-Maizlish, David (2002). “In whole or in part: Group rights, the intent element of genocide, and the ‘quantitative criterion’.” New York University Law Review, 77, 1369–1403: 1373.
 
6
Ibid., at 1395.
 
7
Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, Article 30(2), available at https://​www.​icc-cpi.​int/​resource-library/​Documents/​RS-Eng.​pdf
 
8
Power, Samantha (2002). “A problem from hell”: America and the age of genocide. New York: Harper Perennial.
 
9
Glueck, Sheldon (1944). War criminals: Their prosecution and punishment. New York: Knopf.
 
10
Glueck, Sheldon (1946). The Nuremberg trial and aggressive war. New York: Knopf.
 
11
Clark, Roger S. (2001). “Countering transnational and international crime: Defining the agenda.” Hume Papers on Public Policy, 6, 20–29.
 
12
Staub, Ervin (1989). The roots of evil: The origins of genocide and other group violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 13.
 
13
Brannigan, Augustine (1998). “Criminology and the Holocaust: Xenophobia, evolution and genocide.” Crime and Delinquency, 44(2), 257–277.
 
14
Kressel, Neil J. (2002). Mass hate: The global rise of genocide and terror. New York: Westview Press.
 
15
Ibid.
 
16
Sternberg, Robert J. (2003). “A duplex theory of hate: Development and application to terrorism, massacres, and genocide.” Review of General Psychology, 7(3), 299–328.
 
17
Ibid.
 
18
Rummel, R. J. (1995). “Democracy, power, genocide, and mass murder.” Journal of Conflict Resolution, 39(1), 3–26.
 
19
Verdeja, Ernesto (2002). “On genocide: Five contributing factors.” Contemporary Politics, 8(1), 37–54.
 
20
Savelsberg, Joachim J. (2009). “Genocide, criminology, and Darfur.” Theoretical Criminology, 13(4), 477–480.
 
21
Harff, Barbara (2003). “No lessons learned from the Holocaust? Assessing risks of genocide and political mass murder since 1945.” American Political Science Review, 97(1), 57–73.
 
22
Ibid.
 
23
Conversi, Daniele (2006). “Demo-skepticism and Genocide.” Political Studies Review, 4, 247–262: 247.
 
24
Kolin, Andrew (2008). State structure and genocide. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
 
25
Ibid., at 67.
 
26
Williams, Jr., Robin W. (1994). “The sociology of ethnic conflicts: Comparative international perspectives.” Annual Review of Sociology, 20, 49–79.
 
27
Ibid.
 
28
Dutton, Donald G., Boyanowsky, Ehor O. & Bond, Michael H. (2005). “Extreme mass homicide: From military massacre to genocide.” Aggression and Violent Behavior, 10, 437–473.
 
29
Ibid.
 
30
Stone, Dan (2004). “Genocide as transgression.” European Journal of Social Theory, 7(1), 45–65.
 
31
Ibid.
 
32
Ibid., at 59.
 
33
Dadrian, Vahakn N. (1975). “A typology of genocide.” International Review of Modern Sociology, 5, 201–212.
 
34
Ibid.
 
35
Ibid.
 
36
Ibid.
 
37
Ibid.
 
38
Campbell, Bradley (2015). The geometry of genocide: A study in pure sociology. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press.
 
39
Ibid.
 
40
Ibid.
 
41
Sutherland, Edwin H. (1947). Principles of Criminology (4th Ed.). Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott.
 
42
Day, L. Edward & Margaret Vandiver (2000). “Criminology and genocide studies: Notes on what might have been and what still could be.” Crime, Law, & Social Change, 34, 43–59; Yacoubian, Jr. George S. (2000). “The (in)significance of genocidal behavior to the discipline of criminology.” Crime, Law, & Social Change, 34, 7–19; Rothe, Dawn L. & Ross, Jeffrey I. (2008). “The marginalization of state crime in introductory textbooks on criminology.” Critical Sociology, 34(5), 741–752; Laufer, William S. (1999). “The forgotten criminology of genocide” In Freda Adler and Gerhard O. W. Mueller (eds.), The criminology of criminal law (pp. 71–82). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers; Maier-Kitkan, Daniel, Mears, Daniel P. and Bernard, Thomas J. (2009). “Towards a criminology of crimes against humanity.” Theoretical Criminology, 13(2), 227–255.
 
43
Rothe, Dawn L. & Friedrichs, David O. (2006). “The state of the criminology of crimes of the state.” Social Justice, 33(1), 147–161.
 
44
Alvarez, Alexander (1997). “Adjusting to genocide: The techniques of neutralization and the Holocaust.” Social Science History, 21(2), 139–178.
 
45
Brannigan, Augustine & Hardwick, Kelly H. (2003). “Genocide and general theory.” In Chester L. Britt & Michael R. Gottfredson (Eds.), Control Theories of Crime and Delinquency (109–131). New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction.
 
46
Hagan, John & Levi, Ron (2005). “Crimes of war and the force of law.” Social Forces, 83(4), 1499–1534.
 
47
Hagan, John, Schoenfled, Heather, & Palloni, Alberto (2006). “The science of human rights, war crimes, and humanitarian emergencies.” Annual Review of Sociology, 32(3), 29–49.
 
48
Hagan, John & Rymond-Richmond, Wenona (2008). “The collective dynamics of racial dehumanization and genocidal victimization in Darfur.” American Sociological Review, 73, 875–902.
 
49
Alvarez, Alex (2010). Genocidal Crimes. New York: Routledge.
 
50
Savelsberg, Joachim J. (2010). Crime and human rights. Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
 
51
Ibid.
 
52
Ibid.
 
53
Brannigan, Augustine (2013). Beyond the banality of evil: Criminology and genocide. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
 
54
Rafter, Nicole (2016). The crime of all crimes: Toward a criminology of genocide. New York: New York University Press.
 
55
Ibid.
 
56
Ibid.
 
57
Fox, Nicole (2019). Rwanda, genocide, and gender-based violence. Contexts: Sociology for the public. Available at: https://​contexts.​org/​blog/​rwanda-genocide-and-gender-based-violence/​
 
58
Brown, Sara E. (2018). Gender and the genocide in Rwanda: Women as rescuers and perpetrators. New York: Routledge; Fox, Nicole, and Brehm, Hollie Nyseth (2018). “I decided to save them”: Factors that shaped participation in rescue efforts during genocide in Rwanda. Social Forces, 96(4), 1625–1648.
 
59
Brown, Gender and genocide in Rwanda, 40.
 
60
Fox, Nicole, and Brehm, Hollie Nyseth (2018). “I decided to save them”: Factors that shaped participation in rescue efforts during genocide in Rwanda. Social Forces, 96(4), 1625–1648.
 
Literature
Metadata
Title
How Can We Understand Genocide?
Author
William R. Pruitt
Copyright Year
2021
Book
An Introduction to the Criminology of Genocide

Print ISBN: 978-3-030-65210-4

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-65211-1

Copyright Year: 2021

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65211-1_2