Genocide

Genocide: An Anthropological Reader helps to lay a foundation for a ground-breaking "anthropology of genocide" by gathering together for the first time the seminal texts for learning about and understanding this phenomenon.

Acknowledgements vii

Introduction: Genocide and Anthropology 1
Alexander Laban Hinton

Part I: Conceptual Foundations 25

1. Genocide 27
Raphaël Lemkin

2. Text of the UN Genocide Convention 43

3. Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century 48
Leo Kuper

4. Genocide: A Sociological Perspective 74
Helen Fein

5. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil 91
Hannah Arendt

6. Modernity and the Holocaust 110
Zygmunt Bauman

Part II: Genocide, History, and Modernity 135

7. Victims of Progress 137
John H. Bodley

8. Culture of Terror – Space of Death: Roger Casement's Putumayo Report and the Explanation of Torture 164
Michael Taussig

9. National Socialist Germany 19
Eric R. Wolf

Part III: Manufacturing Difference and "Purification" 209

10. "Ethnic Cleansing": A Metaphor for Our Time? 211
Akbhar S. Ahmed

11. Imagined Communities and Real Victims: Self-Determination and Ethnic Cleansing in Yugoslavia 231 Robert M. Hayden

12. A Head for an Eye: Revenge in the Cambodian Genocide 254
Alexander Laban Hinton

13. Dead Certainty: Ethnic Violence in the Era of Globalization 286
Arjun Appadurai

Part IV: Coping and Understanding 305

14. Fear as a Way of Life 307
Linda Green

15. The Myth of Global Ethnic Conflict 334
John R. Bowen

16. Speechless Emissaries: Refugees, Humanitarianism, and Dehistoricization 344
Liisa H. Malkki

Appendix: Websites on Genocide 368

Index 370

"An excellent contribution to the field of genocide studies: lucid, wide-ranging, and accessible; should be a core text in any course on genocide." Roger W. Smith, The College of William and Mary

"This volume, edited and ably introduced by an important scholar of genocide, is an especially timely and important contribution to a growing field. Essential international documents coupled with an excellent collection of previously published articles attempt to explain genocide and related state violence as the first step towards prevention. This fine book is especially suitable for undergraduate and graduate courses." Carole Nagengast, University of New Mexico

"This Reader will be useful for college teachers and novice administrators. Each contribution examines dramatic and controversial issues of immediate concern. While the collection addresses genocidal disasters, its emphasis is on the differences among them, and the varied interpretations that have been made of their causes and their consequences." Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

Alexander Laban Hinton is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and a faculty fellow in the Center for Global Change and Governance at Rutgers University, Newark. He is the editor of Biocultural Approaches to the Emotions (1999) and Annihilating Difference: The Anthropology of Genocide (2002), an edited collection of new research articles During the 20th century tens of millions of people were annihilated by genocidal regimes. As we enter the 21st century, we must look back and attempt to comprehend what has been aptly termed the "century of genocide." It is only through such understanding that we can begin to imagine ways of preventing or minimizing future atrocities.

Genocide: An Anthropological Reader lays the foundation for a ground-breaking "anthropology of genocide" by gathering together for the first time the seminal texts for learning about and understanding this phenomenon. While scholars in other fields have conducted excellent analyses of the macrolevel factors facilitating genocide, few have been able to approach genocide from the local perspective. By filling this important niche-pulling together key anthropological and interdisciplinary sources on genocide - Genocide: An Anthropological Reader stands both to make an important contribution to our understanding of genocide and to serve as a valuable resource for readers across a wide variety of fields.