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Genocide studies is an academic field of study that researches genocide. Genocide became a field of study in the mid-1940s, with the work of Raphael Lemkin, who coined genocide and started genocide research, and its primary subjects were the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust;[1] the Holocaust was the primary subject matter of genocide studies, starting off as a side field of Holocaust studies, and the field received an extra impetus in the 1990s, when the Bosnian genocide and Rwandan genocide occurred.[2] It received further attraction in the 2010s through the formation of a gender field.[3]
It is a complex field which has a lack of consensus on definition principles[4] and has had a complex relationship with mainstream political science;[clarification needed] it has enjoyed renewed research and interest in the last decades of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century. It remains a relevant yet minority school of thought that has not yet achieved mainstream status within political science.[5]
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Background
The beginning of genocide research arose around the 1940s when Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish lawyer, began studying genocide.[1] Known as the "father of the genocide convention", Lemkin invented the term genocide and studied it during World War II.[6] In 1944, Lemkin's book Axis Rule introduced his idea of genocide, which he defined as "the destruction of a nation or ethnic group"; after his book was published, controversy broke out concerning the specific definition. Many scholars believed that genocide is naturally associated with mass murder, the Holocaust being the first case; there were also several other scholars who believed that genocide has a much broader definition and is not strictly tied to the Holocaust.[7] In his book, Lemkin wrote that "physical and biological genocide are always preceded by cultural genocide or by an attack on the symbols of the group or violent interference of cultural activities."[8] For Lemkin, genocide is the annihilation of a group's culture even if the group themselves are not completely destroyed.[9]
After the publication of Lemkin's 1944 book, Israel Charny sees Pieter Drost's 1959 publication of The Crime of State and a 1967 Congress for the Prevention of Genocide held by La Société Internacionale de Prophalylaxie Criminelle in Paris as two of the few notable events in genocide research prior to the 1970s.[10]
1970s/1980s
Charny credits the main launch of genocide studies to four books published in the late 1970s/early 1980s: Genocide: State Power and Mass Murder, by Irving Louis Horowitz in 1976; Accounting for Genocide: National Responses and Jewish Victimization in the Holocaust, by Helen Fein in 1979; Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century, by Leo Kuper in 1981; his own 1982 book, How Can We Commit the Unthinkable? Genocide: The Human Cancer; and Genocide and Human Rights: A Global Anthology, by Jack Nusan Porter in 1982. He argues that although Fein's book did not directly refer to genocides other than the Holocaust, its comparison of genocide in different countries occupied by the Nazis "laid groundwork for thinking about comparative studies of genocide in general".[10]
1990s
Starting off as a side field to Holocaust studies, several scholars continued Lemkin's genocide research, and the 1990s saw the creation of an academic journal specific to the field, the Journal of Genocide Research. The major reason for this increase in research, according to Donald Bloxham and A. Dirk Moses, can be traced back to the Rwandan genocide in the 1990s, which showed Western scholars the prevalence of genocide.[2] Despite growth in the preceding decades, it remained a minority school of thought that developed in parallel to, rather than in conversation with, the work on other areas of political violence, and mainstream political scientists rarely engaged with the most recent work on comparative genocide studies.[5] Such separation is complex but at least in part stems from its humanities roots and reliance on methodological approaches that did not convince mainstream political science;[5] in addition, genocide studies are explicitly committed to humanitarian activism and praxis as a process, whereas the earlier generations of scholars who studied genocide did not find much interest among mainstream political science journals or book publishers, and decided to establish their own journals and organizations.[5]
The International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) was created in 1994, with Fein as its first president. Charny credits the plan to create the IAGS with Fein, Robert Melson, Roger W. Smith, and himself meeting at a 1988 Holocaust conference in London in which the four participated in a session on genocides other than the Holocaust.[10]
2000s
In the 2000s, the field of comparative genocide studies lacked consensus on the definition of genocide, a typology (classification of genocide types), a comparative method of analysis, and on time frames.[4] Anton Weiss-Wendt describe comparative genocide studies, which include an activist goal of preventing genocide, as having been a failure in genocide prevention.[4]
In 2005, a second international association of genocide scholars, the International Network of Genocide Scholars (INoGS), was created.[11] In 2006, the journal Genocide Studies and Prevention was launched by Charny on behalf of the IAGS.[10]
2010s
In the 2010s, genocide scholarship rarely appeared in mainstream disciplinary journals, despite growth in the amount of research.[5]
2020s
In the 2020s, following the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel, genocide and Holocaust scholars published their evidence and analyses of allegations of genocide in the Hamas-led attack and on the topic of Gaza genocide. Raz Segal and Luigi Daniele argued that a crisis in the overlapping fields of studies occurred, stating, "We argue that the crisis stems from the significant evidence for genocide in Israel's attack on Gaza, which has exposed the exceptional status accorded to Israel as a foundational element in the field, that is, the idea that Israel, the state of Holocaust survivors, can never perpetrate genocide."[12] Omar McDoom, describing the two fields of study together as HGS (Holocaust and genocide studies), observed a split in the HGS community in which "Israel-uncritical" researchers saw "only Hamas [as having] transgressed", while another part of the community saw "both sides [being] engaged in legally and morally problematic violence". McDoom's analysis found "evidence strongly suggestive of bias in favour of Israel" by a part of the community and made recommendations on "ethical obligations and good practices for scholars engaged in public commentary" in the field.[13]
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In 2010, the study of genocide connected to gender was a new field of study and was considered as a specialty topic within the broader field of genocide research. The field attracted research attention after the genocides of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Rwanda, in which war crimes tribunals acknowledged that several women were raped and men were sexually abused.[3] Feminist scholars study the differences between males and females during genocide by studying the lives of women survivors during the Holocaust.[14] Similar research on the Armenian genocide has explored the representation of Armenian women as victims with specific focus on the film Ravished Armenia. These studies focus on the power of representations to disempower the object of the representation (as "the Armenian women"). Some scholars argue that representations of rape, when they become disempowering, can be viewed as acts of violence themselves.[15]
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