Abstract
A number of scholars have been addressing the problems of genocides and mass murders in modern history; a few have tried to go further back and see whether this type of human behaviour has precedents in previous periods as well.1 To outsiders, the arguments about the definition of genocide may appear arcane, removed from the grim reality they deal with. However, I believe there is a very practical side to the academic discourse on this issue: definitions and descriptions are a first, necessary step to taking preventive measures. It is more likely that such steps produce practical results if the parameters, and therefore questions of liability and responsibility, are defined as clearly as possible.
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Notes
Cf. Rudolph J. Rummel, Death by Government (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1994), pp. 45–78
and Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn, eds., The History and Sociology of Genocide ( New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990 ), pp. 58–229.
David E. Stannard, American Holocaust (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992 ).
Text in Leo Kuper, Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century ( New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981 ), pp. 210–14.
Steven T. Katz, The Holocaust in Historical Context (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994 ).
Chalk and Jonassohn; Henry R. Huttenbach, ‘Locating the Holocaust on the Genocide Spectrum’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies 3, no. 3 (1988): 289–304.
Michael Zimmerman, Rassenutopie und Genozid (Hamburg: Christians, 1996), passim.
Ben Kiernan, Genocide and Democracy in Cambodia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993 ). See also his chapter in this volume.
Rummel, Death by Government; idem, Understanding Conflict and War (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1975–81); idem., Lethal Politics (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1990); idem., China’s Bloody Century ( New Brunswick: Transaction, 1992 ).
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Bauer, Y. (1999). Comparison of Genocides. In: Chorbajian, L., Shirinian, G. (eds) Studies in Comparative Genocide. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-27348-5_3
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