Governments, Citizens, and Genocide: A Comparative and Interdisciplinary Approach

Introduction

Introduction The failure of the international community to tackle the problem of genocide is re®ected by the failure of the academic community to contribute much to our understanding of the problem. The study of genocide has remained marginal to academic discourse. —Michael Freeman1 Silence is the real crime against humanity. —Sarah Berkowitz2 This book presents a comparative and interdisciplinary discussion of the crime of genocide. Given the increasing pervasiveness of genocide in this century, it is surprising that social scientists have so seldom applied their efforts to the study of this particular type of criminality. The social sciences, devoted as they are to the analysis of social phenomena, have much to offer the discourse on genocide. This is especially true of the discipline of criminology, since it is a scienti¤c discipline that speci¤cally and exclusively studies crime and criminals. On the whole the social sciences have been largely blind and mute where genocide is concerned. In 1979, for example, Helen Fein surveyed eighty-two introductory sociology textbooks and found that most ignored the concept or at best brie®y mentioned it in a paragraph or two.3 More recently, Zygmunt Bauman admonished, When compared with the awesome amount of work accomplished by the historians , and the volume of soul searching among both Christian and Jewish theologians , the contributions of professional sociologists to Holocaust studies seems marginal and negligible. . . . This alarming fact has not yet been faced (much less responded to) by the sociologists.4 Even today, “sociological attention to this topic has, at best, grown from almost nonexistent to barely existent.”5 Herbert Hirsch echoes this comment when he asserts that social scientists either do not understand or do not accept the importance of genocide research.6 While there have been a few noteworthy exceptions to this omission, genocide has remained largely outside the mainstream of contemporary social science.7 This is surprising, to say the least. Given the criminological posture toward crime and criminality, it is remarkable that no speci¤c criminological explanations have been applied to genocide even though it has been de¤ned as a crime by various organizations, such as the United Nations, since the 1940s. While various theoretical explanations have been applied to the analysis of genocide, almost none have referred to the large body of theory and research expressly developed to explain criminal acts and actors, even though genocide clearly falls into this category.8 I raise this issue because I believe it to be of central importance in developing a more complete understanding of genocide. The failure of social scientists in general, and criminologists in particular, to address themselves to the study of genocide is not of signi¤cance only for scholars interested in abstract debates; rather, it has broad implications for the ways in which the public conceives and understands genocide . The failure of social scientists to develop a research agenda on genocide reveals much about common attitudes toward and preconceptions of genocide and crime. Since genocide is social action, it involves the social construction of meaning. Max Weber suggested that “Action is social insofar as, by virtue of the subjective meaning attached to it by the acting individual (or individuals), it takes account of the behavior of others and is thereby oriented in its course.”9 Therefore, the ways in which genocide is portrayed by social scientists can serve to shape opinion and policy and in turn heighten concern and spur action. The scholarly analysis of genocide may assist in turning the empty rhetoric of “never again” into a promise and a reality. For example, criminologists have begun to recognize that our choice of behaviors to de¤ne and study as crime can dramatically affect popular perceptions and de¤nitions of crime, and, consequently, social policy. Gregg Barak has recently argued that criminologists need to shape and guide mediated images of crime and crime control in a process he terms “newsmaking criminology.”10 According to Barak, Newsmaking criminology refers to criminologists’ conscious efforts and activities in interpreting, in®uencing, or shaping the presentation of “newsworthy” items about crime and justice. More speci¤cally, a newsmaking criminology attempts to demystify images of crime and punishment by locating the mass media portrayals of incidences of “serious” crimes in the context of all illegal and harmful activities ; strives to affect public attitudes, thoughts, and discourses about crime and justice; . . . allows criminologists to come forth with their knowledge and to establish themselves as credible voices in the mass-mediated arena of policy...