Genocide In Our Time : An Annotated Bibliography With Analytical Introductions

Genocide is a modern term whereby groups of people are killed on the basis of their religion, race, ethnicity, or nationality. This book suggest that modernity and the tremendous social differentiation that is a part of our modern world may, in part, be to blame. The authors examine textbook 20th century horrors: from the massacre of the Armenians, to the planned famine in the Ukraine, to the Holocaust, and links of modern warfare to genocide. By studying cases of genocide, the authors hope to inform and connect to all other efforts to understand and to prevent the mass destruction of human lives. The work of Markusen, Legters, and Palmer focuses on phenomena that are not classically defined as genocide but, since they show many points of intersection, are highly important to the study of genocide. Thus Palmer explores numerous policies towards ethnic minorities worldwide and shows their overt and covert ethnocidal dimensions, while, in the Ukrainian case chosen by Legters, the issue is one of demarcation. Should the Ukrainian famine be viewed as a case involving an economic catastrophe, as a political conflict, as ethnocide, as mass killing, or as genocide? How were these dimensions connected or could they have been? Linkages are also the theme of Markusen\u27s investigation, which looks at the possible connections between modern war and genocide, particularly as it concerns the nature of modern war and its social, psychological, and organizational foundations in modernity. Aspects of the latter are also used by Dobkowski and by Rosenberg and Silverman in their analyses of the Holocaust. Dobkowski views the Holocaust as the paradigmatic genocide. It introduced an unprecedented technological mass killing. It represents a kind of ultimate confrontation with death, faceless and unmediated. Rosenberg and Silverman further demonstrate the criteria under which the Holocaust can be viewed as a unique event. Adalian describes in detail the methods by which the Turkish genocide against the Armenians has been covered up, excused, and denied. Simultaneously, we obtain a good account of the event itself, including some of its causes and consequences. Finally, the manner and dynamic in which the Armenian genocide has been articulated, relativized, and denied can serve in the development of intervention strategies and early warning systems such as those that Charny proposes in his essay.https://surface.syr.edu/books/1029/thumbnail.jp