Genocide
- LAST REVIEWED: 06 March 2025
- LAST MODIFIED: 11 January 2012
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199766567-0065
- LAST REVIEWED: 06 March 2025
- LAST MODIFIED: 11 January 2012
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199766567-0065
Introduction
Genocide is one of the most serious problems confronting humanity. It has produced extreme suffering, hundreds of millions of deaths, and the catastrophic shattering of families, communities, and cultures. While genocidal violence has a long history, dating from the Roman destruction of Carthage to ancient Assyria and beyond, the term “genocide” was coined as recently as the early 1940s by Raphael Lemkin, the Polish-Jewish lawyer who spearheaded an international campaign to criminalize the destruction of human collectivities. This effort successfully delivered the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Mostly stagnated by the onset of the Cold War, the field of genocide studies did not begin to mature until the early 1980s. Its growth was catalyzed further in the 1990s and the early 2000s by the genocides in Bosnia, Rwanda, and Darfur. Having developed vigorously in the late 2000s, the constitution of the field now demands critical reflection. This bibliography surveys the field’s broad literature, with a particular focus on the concept of genocide, the genocidal process, and key issues in genocide studies.
Broad Overviews
The most comprehensive and reader-friendly overview is provided in Jones 2011. For more dated yet seminal contributions from the first generation of scholars that emerged from the 1980s, see Kuper 1982 and the autobiographical essays included in Totten and Jacobs 2002. While this cadre of scholarship is overly focused on totalitarian genocides in the 20th century, recent contributions have developed a richer historical and conceptual framework. The contributions in Stone 2008 indicate a generational transition in the field, but the volume suffers from a “one-genocide-per-chapter” approach that fails to integrate individual cases into a holistic framework. As a corrective, Levene 2005 develops a historiographical framework that situates the rise of genocide with the crystallization of the modern world system, thereby linking cases across space and time. This approach is reflected further in Bloxham and Moses 2010 and, to a lesser extent, in Kiernan 2007. Similarly, Hinton 2002 frames genocide in modernity, indicating key mechanisms and processes that appear across the historical record.
Bloxham, Donald, and A. Dirk Moses, eds. 2010. The Oxford handbook of genocide studies. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
With contributions by many leading second-generation scholars. Offers an interdisciplinary overview and ties together various cases in comprehensive historical framework.
Hinton, Alexander Laban, ed. 2002. Annihilating difference: The anthropology of genocide. California Series in Public Anthropology 3. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
DOI: 10.2307/book8
Historicizes genocide and modernity through an anthropological lens, exploring the manufacture and crystallization of difference, the local dimensions in which genocidal violence is inscribed with cultural meaning, and the aftermaths of genocide.
Jones, Adam. 2011. Genocide: A comprehensive introduction. 2d ed. New York: Routledge.
The primary textbook on the subject, providing a broad yet in-depth conceptual and historical overview. The second edition updates the first in significant ways, including a reframing of some of the case material and a focus on dynamics too often ignored in the field. First edition published in 2006.
Kiernan, Ben. 2007. Blood and soil: A world history of genocide and extermination from Sparta to Darfur. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.
Offers a global perspective with a broad historical range. Framed by four primary themes: the cult of antiquity, the fetish for agriculture, ethnic enmity, and imperial or territorial conquest.
Kuper, Leo. 1982. Genocide: Its political use in the twentieth century. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.
A pathbreaking study, global in scope. Argues that genocide stems from plural societies, whereby two or more ethnic groups compete at disparate levels of power.
Levene, Mark. 2005. Genocide in the age of the nation-state. 2 vols. New York: I. B. Tauris.
Published as the first two volumes of a prospective four, establishes a rich historical framework that marks genocide as an inherent tendency in the modern world system.
Stone, Dan, ed. 2008. The historiography of genocide. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
With contributions from leading second-generation scholars, this volume lays out a fruitful conceptual framework, but its case study chapters are episodically isolated.
Totten, Samuel, and Steven Leonard Jacobs, eds. 2002. Pioneers of genocide studies. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
A collection of autobiographic reflections from the first generation of scholars.
Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login.
How to Subscribe
Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here.
Article
- Africa, Anthropology of
- Aging
- Agriculture
- Animal Cultures
- Animal Ritual
- Animal Sanctuaries
- Anorexia Nervosa
- Anthropocene, The
- Anthropological Activism and Visual Ethnography
- Anthropology and Education
- Anthropology and Theology
- Anthropology, Degrowth and
- Anthropology of Corruption
- Anthropology of Islam
- Anthropology of Kurdistan
- Anthropology of the Senses
- Anthrozoology
- Antiquity, Ethnography in
- Applied Anthropology
- Archaeobotany
- Archaeological Education
- Archaeologies of Sexuality
- Archaeology
- Archaeology and Museums
- Archaeology and Political Evolution
- Archaeology and Race
- Archaeology and the Body
- Archaeology, Gender and
- Archaeology, Global
- Archaeology, Historical
- Archaeology, Indigenous
- Archaeology of Childhood
- Archaeology of the Senses
- Archives
- Art Museums
- Art/Aesthetics
- Autoethnography
- Bakhtin, Mikhail
- Bass, William M.
- Beauty
- Belief
- Benedict, Ruth
- Binford, Lewis
- Bioarchaeology
- Biocultural Anthropology
- Bioethics
- Biological and Physical Anthropology
- Biological Citizenship
- Boas, Franz
- Bone Histology
- Bureaucracy
- Business Anthropology
- Cancer
- Capitalism
- Cargo Cults
- Caribbean
- Caste
- Charles Sanders Peirce and Anthropological Theory
- Childhood Studies
- Christianity, Anthropology of
- Citizenship
- Class, Archaeology and
- Clinical Trials
- Cobb, William Montague
- Code-switching and Multilingualism
- Cognitive Anthropology
- Cole, Johnnetta
- Colonialism
- Commodities
- Consumerism
- Crapanzano, Vincent
- Cultural Heritage Presentation and Interpretation
- Cultural Heritage, Race and
- Cultural Materialism
- Cultural Relativism
- Cultural Resource Management
- Culture
- Culture and Personality
- Culture, Popular
- Curatorship
- Cyber-Archaeology
- Dalit Studies
- Dance Ethnography
- de Heusch, Luc
- Deaccessioning
- Design
- Design, Anthropology and
- Diaspora
- Digital Anthropology
- Digital Nomads
- Disability and Deaf Studies and Anthropology
- Douglas, Mary
- Drake, St. Clair
- Dreaming
- Durkheim and the Anthropology of Religion
- Economic Anthropology
- Embodied/Virtual Environments
- Embodiment
- Emotion, Anthropology of
- Environmental Anthropology
- Environmental Justice
- Environmental Justice and Indigeneity
- Ethics
- Ethnoarchaeology
- Ethnocentrism
- Ethnographic Documentary Production
- Ethnographic Films from Iran
- Ethnography
- Ethnography Apps and Games
- Ethnohistory and Historical Ethnography
- Ethnomusicology
- Ethnoscience
- Europe
- Evans-Pritchard, E. E.
- Evolution, Cultural
- Evolutionary Cognitive Archaeology
- Evolutionary Theory
- Experimental Archaeology
- Federal Indian Law
- Feminist Anthropology
- Film, Ethnographic
- Folklore
- Food
- Forensic Anthropology
- Francophonie
- Frazer, Sir James George
- Geertz, Clifford
- Gender
- Gender and Religion
- Gene Flow
- Genetics
- Genocide
- GIS and Archaeology
- Global Health
- Globalization
- Gluckman, Max
- Graphic Anthropology
- Grass
- Green Violence: Militarization of Natural Resources
- Haraway, Donna
- Healing and Religion
- Health and Social Stratification
- Health Policy, Anthropology of
- Health, Race and
- Heritage Language
- HIV/AIDS
- House Museums
- Human Adaptability
- Human Evolution
- Human Rights
- Human Rights Films
- Humanistic Anthropology
- Hurston, Zora Neale
- Identity
- Identity Politics
- India, Masculinity, Identity
- Indigeneity
- Indigenous Boarding School Experiences
- Indigenous Economic Development
- Indigenous Media: Currents of Engagement
- Industrial Archaeology
- Institutions
- Interpretive Anthropology
- Intertextuality and Interdiscursivity
- Kinship
- Laboratories
- Landscape Archaeology
- Language and Emotion
- Language and Law
- Language and Media
- Language and Race
- Language and Urban Place
- Language Contact and its Sociocultural Contexts, Anthropol...
- Language Ideology
- Language Socialization
- Leakey, Louis
- Legal Anthropology
- Legal Pluralism
- Levantine Archaeology
- Liberalism, Anthropology of
- Linguistic Anthropology
- Linguistic Relativity
- Linguistics, Historical
- Literacy
- Literary Anthropology
- Local Biologies
- Lévi-Strauss, Claude
- Magic
- Malinowski, Bronisław
- Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, and Visual Anthropology
- Maritime Archaeology
- Marriage
- Material Culture
- Materiality
- Mathematical Anthropology
- Matriarchal Studies
- Mead, Margaret
- Media Anthropology
- Medical Activism
- Medical Anthropology
- Medical Technology and Technique
- Mediterranean
- Memory
- Mendel, Gregor
- Mental Health and Illness
- Mesoamerican Archaeology
- Mexican Migration to the United States
- Migration
- Militarism, Anthropology and
- Missionization
- Mobility
- Modernity
- Morgan, Lewis Henry
- Multimodal Ethnography
- Multispecies Ethnography
- Museum Anthropology
- Museum Education
- Museum Studies
- Myth
- NAGPRA and Repatriation of Native American Human Remains a...
- Narrative in Sociocultural Studies of Language
- Nationalism
- Needham, Rodney
- Neoliberalism
- NGOs, Anthropology of
- Niche Construction
- Northwest Coast, The
- Object-Based Teaching and Learning in the University with ...
- Oceania, Archaeology of
- Paleolithic Art
- Paleontology
- Performance Studies
- Performativity
- Personhood
- Personhood and the Body
- Perspectivism
- Philosophy of Museums
- Pilgrimage
- Plantations
- Political Anthropology
- Postprocessual Archaeology
- Postsocialism
- Poverty, Culture of
- Primatology
- Primitivism and Race in Ethnographic Film: A Decolonial Re...
- Processual Archaeology
- Psycholinguistics
- Psychological Anthropology
- Public Archaeology
- Public Sociocultural Anthropologies
- Race
- Religion
- Religion and Post-Socialism
- Religious Conversion
- Repatriation
- Reproductive and Maternal Health in Anthropology
- Reproductive Technologies
- Rhetoric Culture Theory
- Rural Anthropology
- Sahlins, Marshall
- Sapir, Edward
- Scandinavia
- Science Studies
- Secularization
- Semiotics
- Settler Colonialism
- Sex Estimation
- Sexuality
- Shamanism
- Sign Language
- Skeletal Age Estimation
- Social Anthropology (British Tradition)
- Social Movements
- Socialization
- Society for Visual Anthropology, History of
- Socio-Cultural Approaches to the Anthropology of Reproduct...
- Sociolinguistics
- Sound Ethnography
- Space and Place
- Stable Isotopes
- Stan Brakhage and Ethnographic Praxis
- Structuralism
- Studying Up
- Sub-Saharan Africa, Democracy in
- Surrealism and Anthropology
- Technological Organization
- Tourism
- Trans Studies in Anthroplogy
- Transhumance
- Transnationalism
- Tree-Ring Dating
- Turner, Edith L. B.
- Turner, Victor
- University Museums
- Urban Anthropology
- Value
- Violence
- Virtual Ethnography
- Visual Anthropology
- Whorfian Hypothesis
- Willey, Gordon
- Witchcraft
- Wolf, Eric R.
- Writing Culture
- Youth Culture
- Zoonosis
- Zora Neale Hurston and Visual Anthropology