Colijn, G - PBworks



1. Colijn, G. Jan and Colijn, Izaak. Ruin’s Wheel: A father on war, a son on genocide. Margate, NJ: ComteQ Publishing, 2006.

The author of this book discovered his father’s memoirs of World War II decades later. He looks at the destruction of European Jews through the Holocaust. Part Three looks at the causes of genocide.

2. Fein, Helen. “Accounting for Genocide after 1945: Theories and some findings.” International Journal on Minority and Group Rights 1, no. 2 (1993): 79-106.

The author examines genocide and its relation to ethnic discrimination, form of government, and war among states in Asia, Africa and the Mid-East from 1948 to 1988. Genocide has occurred in certain areas of the world so often that they may be considered normal in these regions. Observing on the latter, we note that journalists and scholars have often confused recognition of genocide and genocidal massacres by framing these cases as 'ethnic conflicts', by confusing the death tolls of war and those of massacre.

3. Kiernan, Ben. Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.

Kiernan examines outbreaks of mass violence from the classical era to the present, focusing on worldwide colonial exterminations and twentieth-century case studies including the Armenian genocide, the Nazi Holocaust, Stalin’s mass murders, and the Cambodian and Rwandan genocides. He identifies connections, patterns, and features that in nearly every case gave early warning of the catastrophe to come: racism or religious prejudice, territorial expansionism, and cults of antiquity and agrarianism. In looking at these patterns, Kiernan urges that we study these historical examples to become aware of signs of future genocides.

4. Lerner, Richard M. Final Solutions: Biology, Prejudice, and Genocide. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992.

The author points out how thoughts, followed by human aggression, followed by selection (targeting groups for mass execution or just creating social, economic, or political obstacles to their progress) is dangerous. Final Solutions describes the process of hate and how it is linked to one's genetic make up. Lerner warns that the combination of enmity and genetic make up (nature and nurture), has (and may continue to in the future) led to genocide.

5. Newbury, David. “Understanding Genocide.” African Studies Review 41, no. 1 (1998): 73-97.

This article addresses four conceptual fields associated with genocide, and asks two questions of them: how do these issues become important in understanding the genocide, and how does understanding the genocide illuminate these themes? The themes explored include ethnicity, outside influences, gender issues, and ecological issues. These issues have occurred in North America, Europe, and Asia, as well as Africa and result from the combination of influences and actions widely present in the world today.

6. Rummel, R.J. “Democracy, Power, Genocide, and Mass Murder.” The Journal of Conflict Resolution 39, no. 1 (1995): 3-26.

In this article, the author suggests that the more democratic two nations are the less foreign violence between them, and that the more democratic a regime the less internal violence. Explanations for genocide, such as ethnic, racial, and religious diversity, economic development, levels of education, and cultural differences, are not the only causes for genocide. Rummel proposes a political scale with democracy and totalitarianism as its extremes and those regimes closest to democracy are less likely to have genocides to occur.

7. Staub, Ervin. The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

How can human beings kill or brutalize multitudes of other human beings? Focusing particularly on genocide, but also on other forms of mass killing, torture, and war, Ervin Staub explores the psychological, cultural, and societal roots of group aggression. He sketches a conceptual framework for the many influences on one group's desire to harm another: cultural and social patterns predisposing to violence, historical circumstances resulting in persistent life problems, and needs and modes of adaptation arising from the interaction of these influences. Such notions as cultural stereotyping and devaluation, societal self-concept, moral exclusion, the need for connection, authority orientation, personal and group goals, "better world" ideologies, justification, and moral equilibrium find a place in his analysis, and he addresses the relevant evidence from the behavioral sciences. Within this conceptual framework, Staub then considers the behavior of perpetrators and bystanders in four historical situations: the Holocaust (his primary example), the genocide of Armenians in Turkey, the "autogenocide" in Cambodia, and the "disappearances" in Argentina

8. Valentino, Benjamin A. Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the Twentieth Century. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004.

Valentino finds that ethnic hatreds or discrimination, undemocratic systems of government, and dysfunctions in society play a much smaller role in mass killing and genocide than is commonly assumed. He shows that the impetus for mass killing usually originates from a relatively small group of powerful leaders and is often carried out without the active support of broader society. Mass killing, in his view, is a brutal political or military strategy designed to accomplish leaders’ most important objectives, counter threats to their power, and solve their most difficult problems.

9. Waller, James E. Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 2002.

The author looks at reasons why mass killings and genocide occur, using specific examples. He believes that humans are biologically programmed to kill those who compete with them. He contends that we, as humans, are programmed to commit evil as a result of natural selection; that is, our ancestors survived because of their ability to defeat potential enemies within a scarce realm.

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