Critical Genocide Studies and Mass Atrocity Prevention
Ernesto Verdeja
2019
Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal
Critical genocide studies has emerged as an important strand of scholarship devoted to interrogating the core assumptions of the field of genocide studies. Drawing on the intellectual traditions of Frankfurt School critical theory as well as deconstruction, among other approaches, this scholarship has provocatively explored various methodological limitations in current research, including biases in case selection, problems with the comparative case method, definitional debates, and reductive
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... mulations of perpetrator motivations, among other issues. Informed by critical genocide studies, this article sketches a critical approach to modern atrocity prevention. 1 Although contemporary atrocity prevention has made significant advances, I lay out several areas where a critical approach can be applied fruitfully. The paper puts forth a critical approach to prevention that is self-reflective, dialectical, multivalent, and anti-teleological. Part I provides a brief overview of contemporary prevention theory, which I identify as rooted within a broadly liberal normative orientation. Part II elaborates the four elements of the proposed critical approach toward prevention. Part III uses the critical lens to examine several important assumptions in current atrocity prevention. Two preliminary points of clarification follow. First, a caveat. We should not be seeking to prevent genocide per se, which is insufficiently wide to capture the scope of significant human rights violations that any prevention theory should encompass. Genocide prevention implies that the object of prevention is one specific kind of collective harm, the intentional destruction of groups as such, when in fact the field of critical genocide studies is concerned with a range of widespread collective violence. The focus, I contend, should be on the prevention of large-scale and severe harms against civilians. A somewhat more inclusive formulation is "atrocity crimes," "mass atrocities," or just "atrocities," which include the crimes of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, as well as ethnic cleansing. In reality, the prevention community often uses the terms genocide and atrocities interchangeably but normally means the latter. 2 Here, I use the term atrocities, though it makes sense to maintain the term critical genocide studies as our starting point, if only to highlight the intellectual origins of critical approaches within genocide research that seek to expand and problematize scholarly inquiry. 3 Second, a point about the article's focus: I examine atrocity prevention, which has been shaped and enriched by genocide studies scholarship but also other scholarly fields and practitioner communities. Examining only prevention in the narrower orbit of genocide studies 4 literature misses many of these developments, and in any case atrocity prevention is now sufficiently well developed and sophisticated to warrant critical investigation on its own. In this article, prevention means those strategies, policies, and practices directed toward anticipating and arresting the onset of atrocities prior to their occurrence or reoccurrence. 5 The appropriate range of strategies, policies 1 In addition to various scholarly sources and government, intergovernmental organizations and NGO reports and studies noted in these footnotes, this paper is partly based on 38 semi-structured interviews with prevention practitioners for an ongoing project, "The Scholar-Practitioner Nexus in Atrocity Prevention," which examines current challenges in prevention work and areas where scholarly research can assist the prevention community. Quotations from respondents are cited as "Nexus Project" below. I also draw on occasional work consulting with the United States government, foreign governments, and various human rights organizations.
doi:10.5038/1911-9933.13.3.1676
fatcat:qsuqw4c5bjdcviuo3wb5mzeidm