50251 Genocide Studies

Handbook description

The subject focuses on a thematic, comparative study of the phenomenon of genocide from antiquity to the present. The particular emphasis is on the 20th century. This subject explores topics such as the use of rape, famine and thirst as weapons of mass destruction and the evolution of identifying and isolating potential victims from quarters and ghettoes to concentration camps to death factories.

Subject objectives/outcomes

This is a study of the systematic extermination of national, racial, religious, political, ethnic (or tribal) groups. On completion of this subject, students are expected to be able to:

1. analyse the motives for, and the ideological bases of, such killings
2. examine the socio-political conditions under which such mass killings can and do occur
3. observe the techniques and technologies used in genocides
4. pinpoint legal and moral/personal responsibility for their occurrence
5. understand the indifference of bystanders while these events occur
6. assess gradations of genocide—from destroying cultural institutions, to forcibly transferring children from one group to another, to the planned, total annihilation of an entire race/group
7. review what guards or safeguards there are against repetitions of genocide.

At the end of the course we should be in a position to produce a more embracing definition of genocide - but not a legally binding one - than the one below, and to arrive at a model for classifying what is and what is not strictly genocide.

Contribution to graduate profile

This subject is designed to:

• develop more self-aware individuals
• improve the quality of graduates' analytic thinking, and their capacity to apply theory to complex social situations
• help graduates to be less prejudiced citizens in a multicultural society
• reinforce students' skills in researching and discussing complex social topics
• assist graduates to develop as men and women with greater tolerance of difference
• enhance the political consciousness of graduates
• stimulate graduates towards a greater commitment to social justice and active, informed participation in socially beneficial movements.

Teaching and learning strategies

This class is taught on a lecture and tutorial basis. It includes:

• lectures
• intense lecturer-guided small-group tutorials
• film viewings and analyses.

Content

Genocide refers to, inter alia, the synchronised attacks on the political, social, cultural, economic, religious, biological and moral lives of captive people. UN definitions do not account for all such attacks. The subject examines many cases of what has been described as genocide, through the structures of perpetrators, victims, bystanders and beneficiaries.

Definitions of genocide

Since the 1960s, there have been many attempts by historians and social scientists to find better, or less flawed, definitions than that decreed by the United Nations in 1948. Despite enormous effort, the academic input has been to no avail. Not only is the UN definition the only one recognised in national and international law, but that same definition has now been included, verbatim, in the constitution and schedule of crimes of the International Criminal Court. We can explore its faults and arrive at broader, narrower or better wordings, but we adhere to the United Nations' wording.

The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines the term:

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

1. Killing members of the group;
2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The United Nations, however, does not mention the central role of the state, or the state at all. We have to look at centrally planned and organised state murder, at the destruction wrought by state bureaucracies. We also look at colonisation processes, at what has befallen indigenous groups in terms of what the originator of the term, Raphael Lemkin, called 'genocide': inter alia, synchronised attacks on the political, social, cultural, economic, religious, biological, and moral lives of the 'captive people'.

The United Nations' definition does not cover many groups: city dwellers (as in Pol Pot's Cambodia), the physically/intellectually impaired, homosexuals, or those 'non-existent' (yet very dead) groups defined by their destroyers as 'demonic witches' (in western Europe and the United States), or 'enemies of the people' (Soviet Union).

A major aim of this course is to come to terms with the differences between massacre, mass murder, gross colonial oppression, forced assimilation or religious conversion, and total (or attempted) extermination of a whole genus, as in the case of the Armenians, Hellenes and Assyrians, and the Jews in the 20th century. They represent the most extreme forms of genocide, and much of the course draws from the experiences of these groups.

Assessment

Assessment item 1: Essay

Assessment item 2: Short essay

Assessment item 3: Critique

Minimum requirements

Students are expected to read the subject outline to ensure they are familiar with the subject requirements. Since class discussion and participation in activities form an integral part of this subject, you are expected to attend, arrive punctually and actively participate in classes. If you experience difficulties meeting this requirement, please contact your lecturer. Students who have a reason for extended absence (e.g., illness) may be required to complete additional work to ensure they achieve the subject objectives.

Attendance is particularly important in this subject because it is based on a collaborative approach which involves essential workshopping and interchange of ideas. Students who attend fewer than ten classes are advised that their final work will not be assessed and that they are likely to fail the subject.

Recommended text(s)

The twin prescribed texts are Genocide Perspectives Volumes II and III, available from the Co-op Bookshop. These are your essential learning tools. The material is fundamental for the lectures, tutorials and assignments.

Indicative references

RESEARCH
This subject will require you to research beyond the collection of the University of Technology library and the prescribed readings. It is suggested that you make use of other university libraries, and of online academic databases (which can be accessed through the Library website); and also that your research include sources other than published books (in particular, journal articles).

The AIHGS has also prepared a two-volume set of articles and documents not readily found in libraries, available in UTS Closed Reserve. Please see the staff.

Fisher Library at The University of Sydney and Macquarie University Library has a very extensive set of holdings on Holocaust and genocide. The journal Holocaust and Genocide Studies is in the Macquarie University Library, as is the Yad Vashem Studies Annual series, and the Journal of Genocide Research.

GENERAL READING
The following list of significant general texts on genocide constitute an important collection from which to draw background information on twentieth century genocidal phenomena.

• Charny, Israel, Sherman and Adalian (1999) Encyclopedia of Genocide two `volumes ABC-CLIO. (Your best genocide and case study reference source.)
• Fein, Helen (1993) Genocide—A Sociological Perspective, Sage Publications
• Kuper, Leo Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century Yale University Press New Haven USA
• Tatz, Colin Reflections on the Politics of Remembering and Forgetting (UTS Online)
• Tatz, Colin (2003) With Intent to Destroy
• Totten, Samuel, Parsons, W. and Charney, Israel, eds (1997) Century of Genocide, Garland Publishing, New York.

An invaluable source for all three assessment tasks is JOURNAL STORAGE (www.jstor.org), an electronic database of academic journal articles.

www.amazon.com is a gold mine when it comes to books and their reviews.

An associate of the AIHGS, Alan Jacobs of Chicago, runs an email service on all matters relating to Holocaust and genocide. There is much there for you about many genocidal cases. You can subscribe at h-genocide@h-net.msu.edu