Genocide as a Matter of Degree

Genocide as a matter of degree1bjos_1382 586..612

Bradley Campbell

Abstract

This article employs Max Weber’s ideal-type method to classify genocides basedon their degree of mass killing, unilateralism, and ethnic liability.The identificationof the elements of genocide draws from a general theory of genocide (Campbell2009, 2010) and from theories of social control employing Donald Black’s (1995,1998) theoretical approach, known as pure sociology. Because these theories iden-tify the social features associated with each element of genocide, they can explainthe form genocides take.

Keywords: Violence; genocide; ethnic conflict; social control; pure sociology

Introduction

The failure to allow for variation, according to Stephan Fuchs,‘suffocates muchof social science’ (2001: 12). Too often, sociologists search for the intrinsicnature of the things they study. Thus they distract themselves with debatesabout definitions and other irresolvable matters. Or they limit the range ofvariation with dichotomies that treat, say, an organization as either bureau-cratic or anarchic, or a society as either a premodern Gemeinschaft or amodern Gesellschaft (Fuchs 2001: 13). But if we allow for variation, says Fuchs,we see that such differences are differences in degree, not kind. Bureaucracyand anarchy are thus opposite ends of a continuum. So are Gemeinschaft andGesellschaft, and even in modern society there are ‘pockets of tribal solidaritywithin enlarged cosmopolitan networks’ (Fuchs 2001: 52).

The same kinds of problems often characterize the study of genocide. Schol-ars debate what genocide is (Shaw 2007),whether particular cases are genocides(Katz 1994), and whether or not the Holocaust was ‘unique’ (Rosenbaum2001). Some even see the Holocaust as mysterious and perhaps resistant to

Campbell (Department of Sociology California State University, Los Angeles 5151 State University Drive Los Angeles, CA 90032USA) (Corresponding author email: [email protected])© London School of Economics and Political Science 2011 ISSN 0007-1315 print/1468-4446 online.Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden,MA 02148, USA on behalf of the LSE. DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-4446.2011.01382.x

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explanation entirely (Diner 1990: 144). But the key is to treat genocide andother phenomena as variable. This has been the focus of my previous work,which offers a theory explaining several variable aspects of genocide – not onlyits occurrence, but also variation within genocides, such as specifically whoparticipates, who is killed, and who is spared or rescued (Campbell 2009; 2010).Participation in genocide is variable, for example, and much more so thansuggested by traditional classifications of people as perpetrators, bystanders,or rescuers. Not only are there degrees of participation and rescuing, butindividuals may even engage in contradictory behaviour:They may act as bothperpetrators and rescuers (Campbell 2010; see also Fujii 2009: 8). Here I turn toanother important aspect of genocidal variation: the differences between casesof genocide.As I show, genocide is a matter of degree. It is a continuum varyingalong several dimensions, and this variation can be explained. But first, sincethis analysis employs Donald Black’s (1995) strategy of pure sociology, let usbegin by discussing pure sociology and its relation to the study of genocide.

The pure sociology of genocide

Pure sociology is applicable to a range of behaviours, but it has been appliedmost often to the study of conflict and social control. Conflict occurs whenpeople have grievances – when they define someone’s behaviour as deviant –and social control refers to any way of handling deviant behaviour. Puresociologists have examined conflict and social control broadly (Black 1998;2011; Cooney 2009a; Horwitz 1990), and many have also examined particularforms of social control – including law (Black 1976), feuding (Black 2004b:153–4; Cooney 1998: 73–83), terrorism (Black 2004a; Hawdon and Ryan 2009),interpersonal violence (Cooney 1998; Phillips and Cooney 2005), and suicide(Manning forthcoming). Pure sociologists have also examined social controlby Alcoholics Anonymous members (Hoffmann 2006), institutional reviewboards (Jacques and Wright 2010), employees (Tucker 1999), members ofminority ethnic groups (Baumgartner 1998; Cooney 2009b), and others.

Blackian theories of social control are crucial to understanding genocide,which is also a form of social control (Campbell 2009: 155–8). These theoriesexplain the reaction to conflicts.A conflict occurs whenever at least one personhas a grievance against another, and any particular conflict can elicit manyresponses. A landlord whose tenant owes rent money, for example, may donothing at all, negotiate informally with the tenant, or file a lawsuit.A husbandwhose wife is having an affair may get a divorce, kill himself, or kill his wife. Aman assaulted by a stranger in a bar may walk away, call the police, or fightback. Political elites with grievances against ethnic minorities may curtail theirfreedoms, expel them from the country, or kill them. With any form of deviantbehaviour, numerous responses are possible, but the actual response depends

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on the social geometry of the conflict, which consists of the participants’ socialcharacteristics (Black 1995: 853–4, 2004b: 145). For example, in any conflict, theaggrieved parties may fail to respond:They may tolerate the offence.This formof social control – toleration – is more likely when people have grievancesagainst social superiors, such as when employees are offended by the conductof their employers. In other words, upward tolerance is more likely thandownward tolerance (Black 1998: 89). Other forms of social control can beexplained similarly. The characteristics of conflicts – such as whether they areupward or downward, between intimates or strangers, or between organiza-tions or individuals – predict whether dueling, feuding, corporal punishment,avoidance, negotiation, gossip, law, therapy, or something else will be theresponse. Each form of social control occurs in a particular geometricalenvironment.

Since violence is often a response to a conflict, it can be explained withtheories of social control. There are two ways of doing this. One is to identifythe geometrical features associated with variable aspects of violent socialcontrol. Reciprocal violence of all kinds is associated with equality, forexample, and violence becomes more lethal as the social distance between thedisputants increases (Black 1998: 75–6, 2004b: 148).Another way of explainingviolence is to identify the multidimensional geometry associated with veryspecific forms of violence. Black, for example, defines the classic blood feud asa ‘precise, extended, and open exchange of killings, usually one death at atime’, and he proposes that the classic blood feud occurs under the followingconditions: ‘The participants are groups largely equal in size and otherresources; homogeneous in ethnicity; functionally similar in their activities;mutually independent economically and otherwise; highly solidary in theirinternal relations; and isolated from one another by an intermediate degree ofrelational distance, close enough only for mutual recognition’ (Black 2004b:153). These two ways of explaining violence are complementary. For example,feuding is reciprocal because the conflicting groups are equal. Likewise, theexplanation of lethality tells us why feuding is lethal but limited, often to onedeath at a time. It is because feudists are close in some ways and distant inothers. In principle we can identify the multidimensional social geometry ofany form of social control, provided we have identified the elements thatdistinguish it from other forms, and provided we know the geometrical fea-tures associated with each element.

Note that when using this strategy it is essential to have a well constructeddefinition of the phenomenon to be explained. If our terms are unclear andimprecise, our explanation will be unclear and imprecise (Senechal de laRoche 2004). Nor can we explain a phenomenon if we have defined it based onunimportant features. In defining a dependent variable, what we must do isidentify a distinct form of social control – something clearly distinguished fromother forms by theoretically relevant characteristics.This is what Black does in

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defining the classic blood feud, and his theory is enabled by a definition thatpoints to the precision, duration, restraint, reciprocalism, and lethality of thisform of violence – factors associated with different social geometries andwhich together distinguish blood feuds from vendettas, wars, lynchings, riots,duels, and other forms of violence.

This is also what my definition of genocide does. I define genocide as uni-lateral, ethnically based mass killing (cf. Campbell 2009: 153). This definitiondiffers from others, but it is not wholly idiosyncratic, since each aspect corre-sponds to some extent to one or more well known definitions. For example,genocide is also a form of mass killing for Charny (1994: 75), Chalk andJonassohn (1990:23), Melson (1992: 36), and Midlarsky (2005: 22). ‘Unilateral’corresponds to the term ‘one-sided’ as used by Chalk and Jonassohn (1990:23–4) as well as to Fein’s stipulation that genocide be ‘sustained regardless ofthe surrender or lack of threat offered by the victim’ (1993: 24) and to Charny’sstipulation that genocide occurs ‘under conditions of the essential defenseless-ness and helplessness of the victims’ (1994: 75).And the restriction of genocideto ethnic targets is consistent with definitions used by Bauer (1999: 35), Harffand Gurr (1988: 360), Lemkin (1944:79), and Midlarsky (2005: 22). Still, thisdefinition differs from the others, and it has advantages they do not. Of course,this does not mean other definitions are wrong. Social scientists do not formu-late ‘real’ definitions – at least in the sense of determining the essential natureor essential attributes of some phenomenon (Hempel 1952: 6). Definitions ofgenocide cannot justifiably be described as correct or incorrect, as if genocideis somehow out there awaiting the proper definition (cf. Gibbs 1989: 329;Senechal de la Roche 2004: 1, n. 1).2 Definitions instead are formulated forspecific purposes. Such purposes may be philosophical, political, legal, orwhatever, but mine are scientific.

Scientific definitions are evaluated according to their utility. One aspect ofthis is a definition’s ease of application (Senechal de la Roche 2004: 2). Manyprevious definitions of genocide are difficult to apply to actual cases, as theyspecify certain motives or goals on the part of the perpetrators that are difficultor impossible to observe. For instance, Katz (1994) and Chalk and Jonassohn(1990) both require the intention to destroy an entire group, yet Katz arguesthat only the Holocaust fits his definition while Chalk and Jonassohn includenumerous cases. The inherent difficulty in observing such intentions makes iteasy for scholars with very similar definitions to include different cases.3 Incontrast, we can in most cases readily observe whether mass killing hasoccurred, whether it is unilateral, and whether it is ethnically based. Thisdefinition is thus more easily applied than many others. It distinguishes amongcases of violence, and ultimately, it also aids in explanation. This is because,unlike with other definitions of genocide, its elements have been carefullyselected to make the definition relevant to a broader body of theoretical work.Like Black’s definition of the classic blood feud, each element specified by my



definition of genocide is a variable aspect of social control associated withparticular geometrical characteristics. In previous work, I have therefore beenable to draw from theories of social control (e.g., Black 1998, 2004a, b; Senechalde la Roche 1996, 2001) to offer the following explanation: Genocide is morelikely as ethnic conflicts are characterized by immobility, social distance, andinequality, and as the grievances are directed toward social inferiors ratherthan superiors or equals (Campbell 2009: 160, 2010: 303). But as I show here,the definition is useful not just in distinguishing genocide from other phenom-ena and explaining its occurrence; it is also useful in distinguishing genocidesfrom one another and explaining their differences. Genocides may involvemore or less mass killing, unilateralism, and ethnic liability, and so thesecharacteristics of genocide can also form the basis for a typology of genocide.

Elements of an ideal type of genocide

‘An ideal type’, according to Max Weber, ‘is formed by the one-sided accen-tuation of one or more points of view and by the synthesis of a great manydiffuse, discrete, more or less present and occasionally absent concrete indi-vidual phenomena . . . ’ (1969: 17). Weber’s discussion and use of ideal types isoften confused and inconsistent (Bailey 1994: 17–8; Lazarsfeld 1962: 464;Lopreato and Alston 1970: 89–90). Weber’s discussion is also troublesome inthat he did not see any general scientific value in the ideal type. He believed itwould aid in clarifying the meaning of social phenomena – which he saw as thetask of the social sciences – rather than in the formation of general explana-tions – which he saw as the task of the natural sciences (Hekman 1983: 35).But we can use the ideal type without faithfulness either to Weber’s fulldiscussion of the concept or to his beliefs about science. In certain circum-stances, the ideal type is in fact an extremely valuable – even scientificallyvaluable – classification technique. When a concept varies along a number ofequally important dimensions, rather than constructing an unwieldy typologywith too many values, we can instead focus on the top range of values in eachdimension. And because the ideal type identifies the top range – the extremevalues rather than the typical values – we can focus on each aspect of thephenomenon simultaneously and with extreme clarity. We can also use theideal type – the clearest example of the phenomenon, where all the featuresare magnified – to examine the extent to which actual cases differ from theideal (Bailey 1994: 10–21). Thus, while the ideal type, in Weber’s words, is a‘utopia’ that ‘cannot be found empirically anywhere in reality’ (1969: 17), itgives us a shorthand way of describing the empirical variation we do find.Genocide varies along a number of dimensions, and an ideal type can providea way of analysing this variation. So let us now examine the ways each aspectof genocide varies.



Mass killing

Feuds normally involve the killing of one person at time (Black 2004b: 153).Lynchings target individuals (Senechal de la Roche 1996: 103), as do mosthomicides in modern societies (Cooney 2003: 1385–6). But genocide is a formof mass killing. Like running amok (Black 2011: 10), terrorism (Black 2004a),and warfare, it involves the killing of large numbers of people. Mass killingvaries along two dimensions: intensiveness and scale. The intensiveness ofgenocide refers to the portion of the targets killed, and the scale refers to thetime period and territory over which the killing operates.

First, consider two genocides characterized mainly by a low degree of masskilling. In nineteenth-century Australia, European settlement brought about asignificant decline in the Aboriginal population – from 300,000 to 50,000 – duein part to the direct killing of approximately 20,000 Aborigines by Europeansand their Aboriginal allies in the Native Police Force (Reynolds 2006: 125–7).Particularly at the outset, though, the scale of the killing was minimal, involv-ing only small groups of white settlers joining together briefly to kill nearbyAborigines. The same was true of the massacres of California’s Yuki Indians,whose population declined, largely due to genocide, from about 12,000 in themid-1850s to only 600 ten years later (Thornton 1986: 119, 123). In the 1850s,white cattle ranchers began to settle in an area known as the Round Valley, andwhen the Yuki Indians living there began killing the ranchers’ cattle, whiteswould form small groups to kill nearby Indians. The intensiveness of killing ineach case was also low. Often killing expeditions resulted in only a few deaths,and in general, conflicts against Aborigines and Indians might be dealt with inother ways. In the Round Valley, for example, settlers sometimes broughtIndians to the local reservation instead of killing them.

Mass killing may also be low on one dimension and high on another. Con-sider the 1992 killings of Muslims in Bosnia. Bosnia, which had a 44 per centMuslim and 31 per cent Serb population, was one of several republics to secedefrom Yugoslavia in the early 1990s after conflict with the Serb-dominatedcentral government (Cigar 1995: 5). Serbs within Bosnia opposed secessionand declared Serb Autonomous regions and later the new Republika Srpska,which by the end of 1992 covered 70 per cent of what had been Bosnia (Judah1997: 239; Malcolm 1994: 224). By this time, ethnic Croats and Muslims werelargely gone from Bosnian Serb territory, a result mainly of expulsions, but alsoof the killing of 200,000 to 250,000 Bosnian Muslims – more than 10 per centof the population – by Yugoslavian forces and Serbian militia groups (Gutman1993: xxxi). Here the intensiveness of the killing was limited. For example, in anattack on the heavily Muslim area of Kozarac, Serbs killed 2,500 to 5,000 of thetown’s 27,000 non-Serbs and expelled the rest from their homes (Battiata 1992;Hukanovic 1996: 88; Maass 1996: 38–9; Pervanic 1999: 44–5; Wesselingh andVaulerin 2005: 43). Here and in similar attacks elsewhere, the Serbs killed



many Muslims but brought many more to one of three concentration camps.At two of these, the Omarska and Keraterm camps, where Muslim men wereheld, there were mass executions, lethal interrogations, and other killings(Hukanovic 1996: 27–8, 71–2; Gutman 1993: xiv, 145; Wesselingh and Vaulerin2005: 51–3; Vulliamy 1994: 108–12). But even here, most of the prisonerssurvived. At the Omarska camp, for example, 4,000 to 5,000 men were killedout of perhaps 13,000 (Gutman 1993: xiv, xxxi, 145). But while the intensive-ness was low, the scale of the killing was high – occurring at multiple locationsthroughout the Bosnian areas under Serbian control.

Other genocides, such as the 1994 Rwandan genocide and the Holocaust,were extreme in both intensiveness and scale. In Rwanda, over a period ofthree months, Hutus killed 500,000 to 800,000 Tutsis, about three-fourths of thecountry’s Tutsi population (Des Forges 1999: 15), while the Holocaust, whichoccurred throughout Nazi-occupied Europe, resulted in the deaths of two-thirds of European Jews – and more than 90 per cent of Jews in places such asPoland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia (Shochat 1974: 301). In each case, thekilling took the form not of various localized massacres spurred by individualgrievances, or even a larger campaign of ethnic cleansing, but rather a large-scale, systematic campaign of ethnic extermination.

The intensiveness and scale of genocide vary with each of the elementsassociated with genocide in general – immobility, social distance, and inequal-ity – but each is more strongly associated with certain features in particular.Intensiveness, first of all, is closely associated with the adversaries’ immobility.Genocide in general is associated with immobility, since the possibility ofethnic expulsion and other means of forced separation decreases the likeli-hood of genocide (Campbell 2009: 160). But there may be more or lessimmobility. The expulsion of an ethnic group may be possible but extremelydifficult, or it may be possible to remove only part of an ethnic group. In thesecircumstances, expulsion and other forms of social control may be used inconjunction with genocide.4 This was clearly the case in the Round Valley.Immobility was present, given that the settlers and Indians were attempting tomake use of the same land, yet some of the Indians could be captured andconfined on the local reservation. So when groups of settlers joined together topunish nearby Indians, they killed some and captured others. In Bosnia, too, adegree of mobility limited the intensiveness of killing by allowing for optionsother than killing. The fact that Serbs and Muslims lived throughout all partsof Bosnia closed off some options for peace. It meant there was initially no wayto divide the state to resolve the ethnic conflict (Mann 2005: 366). But ulti-mately Bosnia did break up, and the violence subsided after it had alteredthe ethnic composition of the areas that would become two separatepolitical entities. Most of the violence that brought this about involved expul-sion rather than genocide. Expulsion was possible because areas controlledby the Muslim-dominated Bosnian government were available as a close-by



destination for Muslims in Serb-controlled territories. It was easier to deportrather than kill these people – especially women, children, and elderly menwho would not add to Bosnia’s police force.

The scale of mass killing is closely associated with organization. Organiza-tion refers to the capacity for collective action, and while all groups areorganized to some degree, more organized groups are larger, more enduring,and more formal (Black 1976: 85; Senechal de la Roche 1996: 103–4). Genocidein general is characterized by organizational inequality – with the killers moreorganized than the targets – but the scale of genocide can only be extremewhen the organization of the killers is also extreme. Thus, the genocides inAustralia and the Round Valley of California, which were conducted by small,impermanent, and informal groups, were also small in scale. Moreover, in bothcases, as the organization of the killers increased, so did the scale of the killings.In Queensland this occurred with the formation of Native Police unitsintended to protect whites in frontier areas (Palmer 2000: 49–50). Made up ofAborigines led by white officers, the Native Police would attack Aborigines inresponse to various offences or attack gatherings of Aborigines unprovoked.Though extremely small in number – consisting of groups of six to twelvetroopers and one officer and never numbering any more than 206 men total(Moses 2000: 102) – these forces were still more permanent and formal thanthe small bands of settlers. Similarly, in the Round Valley settlers eventuallyformed the Eel River Rangers, a militia group responsible for killing perhapsmore than a thousand Indians over a period of six months (Carranco andBeard 1981: 95–7; Garrett 1969: 70–1; Miller 1979: 72). Of course, these caseswere still relatively low in both organization and scale compared with theRwandan genocide and the Holocaust, each of which involved mass partici-pation by people involved in enduring and formal groups.

As we can see, scale increases with organization, but we can further specifythe conditions conducive to large-scale genocide by identifying the conditionsassociated with increasing organization. First, when the continuity of deviantbehaviour is high – when offences are frequent – aggrieved parties may orga-nize to deal with such offences on an ongoing basis rather than deal with eachas it arises (Senechal de la Roche 1996: 118). The initial genocidal expeditionsin Queensland and in the Round Valley illustrate this in that they almostalways responded to some specific offence – such as the killing of a settler’slivestock. As the offences continued, more organized groups – the NativePolice and the Eel River Rangers – formed to deal more generally with thesame kinds of offences on a greater scale. In the highly organized, large-scalegenocides – such as the Bosnian genocide, the Rwandan genocide, and theHolocaust – deviant behaviour has an even higher level of continuity. Thesedo not involve localized offences like murders or thefts – not even a seriesof them – but instead ongoing offences like civil wars and conspiracies todominate other groups (Campbell 2009: 155–6).



Greater organization is also associated with strong partisanship. Thirdparties act as strong partisans when they give intense support to one side of aconflict over the other, and strong partisanship is present whenever groupsengage in violence (Black 1998: 131–2; Senechal de la Roche 2001: 128). Thegeometry of a conflict predicts the pattern of partisanship: First, strong parti-sanship occurs when one side of a conflict is superior to the other, as thirdparties support the higher-status adversary. Second, it occurs when thirdparties are close to one side of the conflict and remote from the other, as theysupport the closer adversary (Black 1998: 127, 131–2). Third, strong partisansare more likely to form groups necessary for collective violence when they aresocially close to one another – or solidary (Senechal de la Roche 2001: 128–9).In small-scale genocides, the theory of partisanship explains why groups ini-tially form, but it also explains cases where they become more organized overtime. As the geometrical pattern associated with partisanship becomes morepronounced, third party support becomes more intense, and genocide maybecome more organized and larger in scale.

In the frontier areas of Queensland and the Round Valley, when a settler wasattacked or his property stolen or damaged, the aggrieved party was able toattract the support of nearby whites. These settlers would have been sociallyclose to one another but extremely distant from the socially inferior Aborigi-nes and Indians they attacked. But later, not only did the conflict become morecontinuous, the geometry of the conflicts also changed. In Queensland, theoriginal commandant of the Native Police, Frederick Walker, intended theforce to protect both whites and Aborigines, but settlers who demanded amore aggressive policy toward blacks succeeded in having Walker replaced in1855 (Moses 2000: 100; Palmer 2000: 50). They also had control of the NativePolice transferred from Sydney to local magistrates – who were socially closerto the aggrieved settlers and sympathetic to their concerns (Moses 2000: 100).The Native Police were now in a geometrical location suited to strongerpartisanship toward the settlers, and they began regularly engaging in geno-cidal acts.5

In the Round Valley, the conflict changed with the involvement of anextremely high-status and well-connected rancher.The triggering event for theformation of the Eel River Rangers seems to have been the killing of a prizedblack stallion belonging to Serranus Hastings – a wealthy landowner andformer chief justice of the California Supreme Court (Carranco and Beard1981: 83–4; Garrett 1969: 60).An absentee landowner, Hastings had hired H. L.Hall to supervise his stock. Hall had previously organized genocidal parties inresponse to offences against Hastings’s stock, but with this new offence Hast-ings himself became involved. He then petitioned the governor of California –a personal friend – to raise a company of volunteers to deal with Indian theftand aggression (Garrett 1969: 66; Miller 1979: 68).With a higher status than theother aggrieved parties and social ties to other prominent citizens, Hastings



was in an ideal social location to attract stronger support. The aggressors thusbecame more organized, and the scale of the genocide increased.

The largest-scale genocides – such as the Bosnian, Rwandan, and Nazicases – have been state-led genocides. In such cases, rather than a groupforming in response to a grievance, highly organized state officials themselvesformulate the grievances and orchestrate the violence. These are non-democratic states, which have a number of features conducive to large-scaleviolence. Since decision making is highly centralized, the group that controlsthe government is likely to be highly solidary, and so they formulate grievancesas a group.They can also easily mobilize support through the military and statebureaucracies, and where they need more support, their social location – theirextremely high status and, frequently, their social closeness to most of theircitizens – is conducive to strong partisanship.

Unilateralism

Unilateral violence is one-sided. It moves mainly in one direction, and it differsfrom reciprocal violence, which travels both ways simultaneously – as in a fistfight – or back and forth between adversaries over time – as in a blood feud(Black 1998: 5–6). When unilateralism is extreme, only one side of a conflictuses violence, such as would usually be the case when a parent spanks adisobedient child. But unilateralism varies, and some violence may flow fromthe other direction even when violence is mainly one-sided. This occurs whenreciprocal violence gives way to unilateral violence during the course of aconflict – such as when a victorious fighter continues pummeling a defeatedand incapacitated enemy. Unilateral violence may also occur in response toprevious violence – such as when a child is spanked for slapping her mother –or it may provoke violence – such as when a child being spanked tries to fightback. These are not pure cases of unilateralism, but the violence is asymmetri-cal enough to distinguish them from reciprocal violence, where there adver-saries behave similarly toward one another.

Genocide is unilateral, and its unilateralism distinguishes it from numerousother forms of violence. In particular, it distinguishes genocide from warfare, aform of reciprocal violence that may in other ways be quite similar (Markusen1987). But since the degree of unilateralism is variable, genocides may bedistinguished from one another along this same dimension. Like a fist fight, awar may become unilateral with the defeat of one side, such as when soldiersengage in mass killing after battles (Collins 2008: 94–9; Freeman 1995: 218–21)or after standoffs initially consisting of low-level reciprocal violence (Kluse-mann 2010). Genocide is also less unilateral when it provokes a violentresponse or when it is itself a response to previous violence. For example,as noted above, Europeans and their allies killed approximately 20,000Australian Aborigines during the nineteenth century. But during the same time



period, Aborigines also killed between 2,000 and 2,500 Europeans (Reynolds2006: 125–7). These killings targeted individuals or small groups of whites, andwhites normally responded with massive retaliation – often involving theindiscriminate killing of blacks for weeks or even months afterward (Loos1982: 46; Palmer 2000: 43; Reynolds 2006: 84–8). The violence was mainlyunilateral – nearly ten times greater in one direction than the other – but eachside might respond to the other’s violence.

The Rwandan genocide was also characterized in some ways by a low degreeof unilateralism. The unilateral elements are clear, as the targets were men,women, and children who were neither combatants nor inhabitants of enemy-occupied territory. Still, this anti-Tutsi violence was connected to violenceelsewhere by Tutsis against Hutus. In 1972, for example, a genocide led by theTutsi government of neighbouring Burundi had resulted in 100,000 deaths, andin 1993, after Tutsi army officers assassinated Burundi’s Hutu president,pogroms against Tutsis followed by army killings against Hutus resulted in50,000 deaths (Prunier 1998: 198–206).Additionally, an army of Tutsi exiles hadinvaded Rwanda in 1990 and forced the government to negotiate a power-sharing agreement. Hutus blamed these Tutsi rebels for the 1994 assassinationof Rwanda’s president, and the killing of Tutsi civilians in Rwanda beganshortly thereafter. At this time, the civil war between the Rwandan govern-ment and the Tutsi exiles also resumed, and during its course the Tutsi exilesengaged not only in warfare, but also in civilian massacres – resulting inbetween 25,000 and 60,000 deaths (Des Forges 1999: 16). Of course, the geno-cide of Rwandan Tutsis was larger than this or any previous massacre in eitherBurundi or Rwanda, and the Tutsis targeted were not involved in the civil war.Still, violence by Tutsis against Hutus was occurring at the same time, andRwanda’s Tutsis were attacked in part because of their ethnic similarity toBurundians who had killed Hutus and to Rwandan exiles leading an invadingarmy. The violence was mainly unilateral, but not completely so.

The Bosnian genocide also had some reciprocal elements.The killing mainlyinvolved Serbs killing Muslims. To a lesser extent Serbs killed Croats, andCroats killed Muslims, but Muslim violence against Serbs was rare (Maass1996: 32). Still, it did occur. The Bosnian army, for example, committed asmall number of atrocities, and one Muslim warlord killed hundreds of Serbs(Vulliamy 1998: 76).

Extremely unilateral genocide, on the other hand, is completely one-sided.This was the case with the Round Valley massacres, which almost alwaysoccurred in response to the killing of stock. Indians in the valley rarelyattacked whites, and in the handful of cases where they did, the violence wasvery limited – usually to one death at a time (Carranco and Beard 1981: 64–7,92; Miller 1979: 50–1). The Holocaust, too, was extremely unilateral. The kill-ings of European Jews occurred during a war, and the Nazis believed they werein a ‘war against the Jews’, even that this was a war the Jews themselves had



begun (Dawidowicz 1975; Herf 2005). But there had been no Jewish-led mas-sacres of Germans, for instance, and no invasion by a Jewish army. The overallconflict was also more one-sided than other cases. Mann (2005: 6, 503) arguesthat murderous ethnic cleansing normally arises in situations where two ethnicgroups make political claims to the same territory, but as he points out, theHolocaust deviates from this pattern. Jews made no political claims, and in anycase there was no plausible scenario in which a Jewish state would be estab-lished in Europe. As Goldhagen notes, ‘the Jews of Germany . . . wantednothing more than to be good Germans; the Jews of Eastern Europe felt noprior enmity toward Germans . . . The Germans’ characterization of the Jewsand their beliefs about them were absolutely fantastical, the sort of beliefs thatordinarily only madmen have of others’ (Goldhagen 1996: 412). This conflictwas one-sided, and so was the violence.6

Unilateralism is associated with inequality (Black 1998: 78–9), and it is mostextreme where inequality is greatest. In Australia, for instance, Aboriginesattacked white settlers when circumstances temporarily reduced the settlers’organizational and technological superiority. Sometimes they gathered in largegroups to confront Europeans, and sometimes they attacked vulnerable set-tlers by surprise (Reynolds 2006: 101–3, 105). Also, the Aborigines’ superiorbushcraft often prevented Europeans from pursuing them – to the extent thatfleeing Aborigines might even stop to make faces and yell at their adversaries(Reynolds 2006: 106–7). Even European technology could be overcome oncethe Aborigines learned its limitations.The muskets used in the early part of thenineteenth century took minutes to reload, for example, and Aboriginal clansmight surround an isolated settler and try to provoke him into firing his gun,after which they could attack a temporarily unarmed man. In the second halfof the century, however, whites were armed with revolvers and repeating rifles,and the unilateralism of the settlers’ violence increased as Aboriginal attacksbecame more difficult (Reynolds 2006: 104). In Bosnia, the Muslims’ numericaladvantage over Serbs within Bosnia limited the degree of inequality, thoughthe Serbs still had at least a 20:1 advantage in heavy weaponry (Sells 1996:117). The Bosnian Muslims also had some degree of organization, and so theBosnian army was able to fight on occasion or even commit its own massacres.The Rwandan genocide, the other case of limited unilateralism, was somewhatdifferent. Here violence by Tutsis against Hutus did not occur in the same placeas the anti-Tutsi genocide, but elsewhere where Tutsis were dominant. InBurundi, for example, Tutsis controlled the military, and the military power ofTutsi exiles in Uganda allowed them to invade Rwanda and later to inflictviolence against Hutus in areas they controlled. Here, the reciprocal elementswere due to the inconsistency in Hutu-Tutsi relations – where Hutus and Tutsismight be dominant or subordinate at one time and place but not in another. Inthe Round Valley and the Holocaust, however, inequality was extreme, and theviolence was more unilateral. The Yuki seem not to have had any of the



advantages the Aborigines had with respect to the settlers, and when theyfinally fought back, their attacks were ineffective (Miller 1979: 72). Inequalitywas even greater in the Holocaust, where the agents and allies of an extremelypowerful and organized state attacked mainly unarmed civilians with fewallies.

Ethnic liability

Liability refers to accountability for an offence, and the type of liability deter-mines who must pay a debt, go to prison, or otherwise be held accountable(Black 1998: 49; Senechal de la Roche 1996: 102). Social control may employindividual liability, where only an alleged wrongdoer is accountable, or collec-tive liability, where people are accountable based on their social characteristics(Senechal de la Roche 1996: 103). Genocide targets people based on ethnicity,and so it involves a type of collective liability that may be called ethnic liability.Genocide is thus distinguished not only from lynchings, state executions, andother forms of violence that punish only an alleged offender, but also fromviolence that targets people based on political affiliation, sex, occupation,social class, or some other non-ethnic social category. But the degree of ethnicliability – the extent to which the violence is based on ethnicity and ethnicityalone – varies from case to case, and so variation in ethnic liability alsodistinguishes cases of genocide from one another.7

Ethnic liability involves a kind of indiscriminateness as well as a kind ofselectivity, and it varies along each of these dimensions. Extreme ethnic liabil-ity is indiscriminate in that ethnicity alone determines liability, but in othercases liability is more limited. Many genocides involve the targeting of onlycertain segments of an ethnic group. For instance, it may be that only malemembers of fighting age are killed, and in fact, men of ‘battle age’ have beendisproportionately the targets of most genocides (Jones 2004a).The indiscrimi-nateness of killing may correlate with its intensiveness, but the two conceptsare logically and empirically distinct. A classic blood feud, for instance, isindiscriminate, since any adult male from the opposing group may be killed.And yet it has an extremely low degree of intensiveness: It involves onlyindividual killing (Black 2004b: 153). Indiscriminateness refers to who may bea target, and the intensiveness of killing refers to the proportion of the targetskilled.

Much of the killing in Queensland and in the Round Valley was limited in itsindiscriminateness. In Queensland, for example, Native Police killed all of theAborigine men living on Hinchinbrook Island but left the women and children(Palmer 2000: 51). In the Round Valley, women and children were alsospared – and taken to the nearby Indian reservation – in many of the massacresled by the Eel River Rangers as well as those by less organized groups ofsettlers. To some extent, this was official policy, as can be seen in the Rangers’



captain’s orders to his men to ‘. . . kill all the bucks they could find, and take thewomen and children prisoners’ (Scott 1860: 23). The killing in Bosnia was alsolow in its indiscriminateness. The attackers disproportionately focused on seg-ments of the targeted groups instead of just killing anyone who happened to beMuslim or Croat. In the attack on Kozarac, for example, the Serbs choseprominent citizens to be brought forward and killed immediately (Battiata1992: Hukanovic 1996: 88; Maass 1996: 38–9; Wesselingh and Vaulerin 2005:43). There was also much more killing in the two concentration camps housingmainly Muslim men.

In the Rwandan genocide and the Holocaust, ethnic liability was moreextreme. While in Rwanda the Hutu killers disproportionately targeted Tutsimen (Jones 2004b), overall the genocide was extremely indiscriminate. In theHolocaust, early on the victims were men – Eastern European Jewish menkilled by the SS Einsatzgruppen at the beginning of the Nazis’ war with theSoviet Union in the summer of 1941. But shortly after this, the Nazis begankilling Jewish women and children as well (Dieckmann 2000; Snyder 2009).

In its pure form, ethnic liability is not only indiscriminate, it is also selective.That is, members of an ethnic group are carefully distinguished from membersof other ethnic groups. Ethnic groups are characterized by a notion of commondescent (Weber 1978: 385–9), but since descent may be fictitious or unknown,phenotypes, cultural characteristics, or behavioural characteristics are normallyused as markers of ethnicity (Van den Berghe 1981: 28).Where the selectivity ofgenocide is extreme, the killers use such markers to identify members of thetargeted group and separate them from others. In such cases, ethnic sortingprecedes the killing. Where this kind of sorting is not present, however, ethnicliability is less pure – less ethnic. The genocides of the Aborigines in Australiaand of the Yuki Indians in California, for example, involved a low degree ofselectivity. Certainly the killers targeted groups of Aborigines and Indians assuch,but these were groups living socially and physically apart from the settlers.The killers went into the bush or into the mountains to find Aborigines orIndians.They were not selecting victims living alongside another ethnic group.8

The killings of Muslims in Bosnia, Tutsis in Rwanda, and Jews in Europe, onthe other hand, were characterized by extreme ethnic selectivity. In Bosnia,where small pockets of each ethnic group were distributed throughout therepublic (Mann 2005: 366), the attackers rounded up Muslims and Croats fromthe heterogeneous population. Similarly, in Rwanda, Hutus and Tutsis lived inthe same locations, with several Hutu families typically surrounding each Tutsifamily (Prunier 1998: 249). The killers could not simply attack a village orneighbourhood without first separating Tutsis from others. In many places,they accomplished this by promising Tutsis protection and getting them togather in a single location.Throughout the country, then, schools, churches, andcommunity centres were the primary locations of mass killing (Lemarchand2004: 408; Scherrer 2002: 111). Hutu militias also set up roadblocks to prevent



Tutsis from escaping, and here they would use various means to distinguishTutsis from Hutus. All Rwandans were required to carry identification cardsindicating their ethnicity (Des Forges 1999: 35–8), and so the Hutus at theroadblocks would check for identification. Identification as a Tutsi would meancertain death, but given that the cards could be falsified, the guards would alsolook for physical features associated with Tutsis – such as straight noses andthin lips. In some cases, then, even Hutus with genuine cards might be killed ifthey looked enough like Tutsis (Prunier 1998: 249).

Ethnic selectivity was also extreme in the Holocaust. In the Lithuanian cityof Kovno, for example, many Jews lived among other Lithuanians, and so theseJews had to be identified and isolated. During the first few weeks after theNazis invaded in June 1941, several thousand Jews were arrested and thenkilled at an old military fort outside the city, and later the Nazis established aJewish ghetto in Vilijampole, where all 30,000 of Kovno’s Jews were confined(Beinfeld 1997: 31; Ginaite-Rubinson 2005: 22–3; 48; Mishell 1998: 391; Tory1990: 23–4). With the establishment of the ghetto, all of the city’s Jews werenow physically removed from others, and the Nazis then began a series oflarger-scale killing operations. By the end of 1941 half of Kovno’s Jewishresidents were dead.

As we have seen, the liability of genocide has two dimensions. Ethnic liabil-ity is more indiscriminate as it extends to every member of the targeted ethnicgroup, and ethnic liability is more selective when the killers engage in ethnicsorting prior to the killing. Like other features of genocide, indiscriminatenessand selectivity may be explained with aspects of a conflict’s social geometry.First, collective liability increases with social polarization (Senechal de laRoche 1996: 116), so ethnic liability is more indiscriminate when the ethnicgroups involved in genocide are more socially distant and unequal. In theRound Valley, for example, where genocidal expeditions often targeted Indianmen, relationships between Indians and whites were not completely polarized.For example, some of the Yuki Indians lived on the ranches or on the RoundValley’s reservation, and many of these worked for the whites as servants andlabourers (Carranco and Beard 1981: 60; Miller 1979: 47). The genocide wasdirected toward the Yuki living in the mountains rather than these sociallycloser Indians living nearby, but the presence of social ties between whites andIndians also seems to have limited the killing beyond this. It meant that inmany cases the killers spared the women and children. Instead of killing them,they brought them to the reservation, where they would be physically andsocially closer. Overall the status differences between the Indians and thesettlers were also not extreme on all dimensions, since the Indians outnum-bered the settlers and since the settlers’ degree of organization was low. In theHolocaust and the Rwandan genocides, however, and in other major cases ofgenocide where liability is extremely indiscriminate, the aggressors werehighly organized and substantially outnumbered the targets.



The selectivity of genocide, the second dimension of ethnic liability, alsoresults from a particular pattern of group relations. Genocide is more selectivewhen ethnic groups are physically entangled but socially segmented. Genocidemay occur after socially distant groups come into contact, such as in the casesin Australia and California, but here selectivity is weaker. Targeting is lessethnically based, since ethnic sorting does not precede the killing. But comparethese with the Rwandan case, where as noted above, Hutus and Tutsis livedtogether in the same villages and neighbourhoods. They were physically closeto one another, but despite this, ethnic divisions were rigid. Ethnic identity wasassigned at birth and unchangeable, and many sectors of Rwandan societywere organized along ethnic lines (Campbell 2009: 162). Social segmentationwas extreme, then, but so was physical closeness. And so for the genocide toproceed, Tutsis first had to be set apart physically just as they were socially.

A continuum of genocide

The foregoing discussion identified the dimensions on which genocides varyand the extreme values on each dimension (see Figure I). Now we can gobeyond simply examining each element separately. Our analysis also allows usto construct an ideal type of genocide that can be employed to more easilymake sense of genocidal variation. Genocide in its ideal form involves inten-sive, large-scale mass killing; it is extremely unilateral; and it targets members

Figure I: The elements of genocide

Element Definition Low value High value Geometry

Mass killingIntensiveness Proportion of

targets killed.Killing combined

with non-lethalsanctions(expulsion, etc.)

Completeextermination.

Immobility

Scale Time andterritory overwhich thekilling operates.

Small, localmassacres.

Coordinatednational orregionalmassacres.

Organization

Unilateralism Extent to whichviolence movesin only onedirection.

Some violence bymembers oftargeted group.

No violence bymembers oftargetedgroup.

Inequality

Ethnic liabilityIndiscriminateness Extent to

which ethnicityalonedeterminesliability.

Targets only aportion of anethnic group(men, elites,etc.).

All members ofan ethnicgroup arepotentialtargets.

Polarization

Selectivity Extent to whichindividuals aredistinguishedby ethnicity.

No sorting takesplacebeforehand.

Sorting toseparate thetargets fromothers.

Physicalentanglement,socialsegmentation



of an ethnicity indiscriminately and carefully selects them out from others.Hypergenocides, which have high values on all dimensions, closely approachthe ideal type. As we saw, the Holocaust not only had high values on everydimension, but far exceeded even the Rwandan genocide in the scale of thekilling and many other factors.

Hypergenocides, where every feature that distinguishes genocide fromother phenomena is heightened, are the clearest instances of genocide. Butmost genocides are not hypergenocides, just as most instances of violencegenerally – as well as many other phenomena – are not extreme (Collins 2008;Cooney 2009c: 592). Genocide in practice more commonly occurs where geno-cide is in its minimal rather than maximal form. These protogenocides, at theopposite end of a continuum of genocide, have low values on all of thedimensions. In this form genocide is supplemented with other forms of vio-lence; it occurs on a small scale; it is unilateral but has some reciprocal ele-ments; and it targets a portion of an ethnic group through direct attacks notpreceded by sorting. Many of the genocidal expeditions by settlers againstAborigines in Australia were protogenocides, since while they were unilateral,ethnically based mass killings, they were low on all of these dimensions.

Since hypergenocides and protogenocides differ along a number oftheoretically important dimensions, they occur in different geometrical envi-ronments. Hypergenocide, for example, occurs in response to continuousdeviant behaviour on the part of members of a low status ethnic groupagainst extremely high status, organized, and well-connected members of ahigh status ethnic group in situations where these ethnic groups are physi-cally entangled, extremely socially distant, extremely unequal, and extremelyimmobile. In these cases, powerful agents of an authoritarian or totalitarianstate typically formulate grievances and gather support against membersof a stigmatized, disenfranchized, unorganized, and unarmed ethnic groupwithin their territory. In contrast, protogenocide occurs in response to spe-cific instances of deviance on the part of members of a low status ethnicgroup against ordinary members of a high status ethnic group in situationswhere these ethnic groups are physically adjacent but not entangled andwhere their social distance, inequality, and immobility are high but lessextreme due to ties between some members of each group, less asymmetry insize or military technology (perhaps only in certain situations), and someavailability of repressive options other than killing. In these cases, the griev-ances are formulated by smaller groups of people – sometimes settlers oncolonial frontiers who form groups to respond to offences by the nativeinhabitants.

As seen in Figure II, hypergenocides and protogenocides are polar types –opposite ends of a continuum of genocide – and so many cases will fallsomewhere in between. As we have seen, in Rwanda, Bosnia, and the RoundValley, genocide was neither extreme nor low on all the dimensions. The



Rwandan genocide, close to hypergenocide in its intensiveness, scale, indis-criminateness, and selectivity, nevertheless had warlike elements that made itless unilateral. Conversely, the genocide in the Round Valley was high inunilateralism but low on other dimensions. The Bosnian case was even moremixed.Though large in scale and extreme in its selectivity, it was less intensive,indiscriminate, and unilateral than an extreme case such as the Holocaust. It isin examining these intermediate cases that the ideal typology is especiallyuseful. The highly variable social geometry of ethnic conflicts gives rise togenocides varying in multiple ways along a number of important dimen-sions, and the ideal typology gives us a way of analysing – and ultimately,explaining – this variation.

Classifying other cases of genocide

Cases of genocide, of course, are more variable even than those we haveexamined so far, but we can analyse any case based on its divergence from theideal type. Consider two additional cases: the 1937–38 Nanjing massacre andthe 1937 massacre of Haitians in the Dominican Republic. Each, like theintermediate cases examined above, was highly genocidal in some respects butless so in others (see Figure III).

In December 1937, after Japanese soldiers took control of the Chinese cityof Nanjing, they began killing the Chinese soldiers and civilians left in the city.

Figure II: A continuum of genocide

Protogenocide Hypergenocide

Queensland Round Valley Bosnia Rwanda Holocaust

Intensiveness Low Low Low High HighScale Low Low High High HighUnilateralism Low High Low Low HighIndiscriminateness Low Low Low High HighSelectivity Low Low High High High

Figure III: Other cases of genocide

cilbupeRnacinimoDgnijnaN

Intensiveness hgiHhgiHScale muideMmuideMUnilateralism hgiHwoLIndiscriminateness woLhgiHSelectivity hgiHwoL



The soldiers raped and mutilated women and girls, usually before killing them,and they employed sadistic methods of killing both men and women – includ-ing disemboweling, crucifixion, mass incineration, and live burial (Chang 1997:87–99). Overall, this genocide resulted in the deaths of more than 200,000, andpossibly as many as 400,000, of the 600,000 persons in the city at the time of theoccupation (Chang 1997: 100–3). This was a case extreme in its intensivenessand indiscriminateness, reflecting the extreme social distance and inequalitybetween the aggressors and targets. The Chinese did outnumber the Japanesesoldiers, and while we would expect this to lessen the violence, overall theorganizational superiority of the Japanese seems to have enabled it. Thesoldiers defending the city – poorly trained, lacking cohesion, and guided byvacillating leaders – had attempted (largely unsuccessfully) to flee the cityprior to the Japanese attack, and half of the civilian population (includingmany of the wealthy and resourceful members) had also fled (Chang 1997:70–81). The organization of the attackers also enabled killing on a largerscale – over a six week period throughout the city – than the killing expeditionsin Australia or California. Still, the scale was smaller than cases occurringon a national or international scale. The medium scale of the genocide isconsistent with a medium level of organization. Though the killers were orga-nized – members of the Japanese Army – the killing was not planned by theJapanese government or orchestrated from the top and was even condemnedby one of the soldiers’ commanding officers (Chang 1997: 50–2). The unilater-alism here was low. The overall conflict involved violence on both sides, and itbecame completely unilateral only after the Japanese victory.And finally, therewas no selectivity such as we have seen in Bosnia, Rwanda, or in theHolocaust. Without the physical entanglement of ethnic groups that occurredin those cases, the Japanese had no need to sort people out by their ethnicidentities.

Consider also another case from 1937: the genocide against Haitians in thenorth-western frontier of the Dominican Republic. The Dominican Republicwas a dictatorship under President Rafael Trujillo, who had come to power ina 1930 coup. Trujillo and his cabinet members advocated a nationalist versionof modernization and sought to use (and expand) the state’s power to bringabout their goals (Turits 2002: 603–4). The frontier areas particularly con-cerned them, and they considered the presence of Haitians near the borderwith Haiti a ‘pacific invasion’ that threatened the Dominican nation. In theevent of an invasion launched by exiles from Haiti, they feared that the borderareas would allow for easy passage. They also thought of the Haitian-Dominican culture that flourished on the frontier as backward, uncivilized, andAfrican. In particular, they saw the unconventional religious practices of thoseon the border – such as their fanaticism and their practice of Voudou – as athreat to the project of modernization and homogenization (Turits 2002: 599,605). To deal with these grievances, hundreds of soldiers from the Dominican



army (along with some civilian reserves) killed somewhere from 10,000 to20,000 Haitians during a five-day period in October of 1937 (Roorda 1996;Turits 2002).

Here, conditions were conducive to genocide, and the killing was highlygenocidal in many ways. Although Dominicans and Haitians in the frontierarea were socially close – maintaining distinct identities but similar andintermingled enough that they shared a common culture (Turits 2002:594–8) – those who formulated the grievances and planned the genocide (stateofficials) and those who carried out the killings (members of the Dominicanarmy) were extremely socially distant and superior outsiders. The worry aboutan invasion from Haiti also meant they were unlikely to use expulsion as anoption, and so the situation was characterized by levels of social distance,inequality,and immobility conducive to highly intensive and unilateral violence.Unilateralism was especially extreme. The violence was not a response toprevious violence, and as Turits notes, for the targets ‘the genocidal rampageappeared to come out of nowhere, like an act of madness’ (2002: 620). Nor didthe genocide provoke violence by Haitians or by the Haitian government.Haiti’s president even prohibited public discussion of the massacre in an effortto avoid conflict with the Dominican Republic (Turits 2002: 622).The organizedaggressors were also able to carry out a fairly large-scale genocide over a largeterritory and over a period of several days. And the selectivity was high.Dominicans and Haitians near the border were difficult to distinguish, and thesoldiers would employ local officials to point out Haitians so they could separatethem out from the Dominicans (Turits 2002:618).This genocide was close to theideal type in many ways, then, but the indiscriminateness of ethnic liability waslow.They did not limit the killing to men or to elites, as is often the case, but theydid limit it so that only Haitians in the north-western frontier region – not thosethroughout the rest of the country – were attacked. Of course, the issues thatgave rise to the killing had to do with Haitians in the border region, but we canalso explain why liability did not extend any further,even though large numbersof Haitians lived in other areas of the country. It is because Haitians in otherparts of the country were socially closer to the aggressors.These Haitians weremigrant workers who worked on the sugar plantations, and their migration wasregulated by the government for the benefit of the sugar companies. Theseworkers,then,had interdependent relations with Dominicans in the interior andwith the regime itself (Roorda 1996: 304–6).

Comparing other typologies of genocide

Typologies of genocide simply offer different ways of distinguishing amongcases. Like definitions, they cannot be true or false, but may be more or lessuseful. And like definitions, typologies are more useful when they are



applicable to actual cases and when they are theoretically based (cf. Cooneyand Phillips 2002: 78–80; Lenski 1994: 21; Senechal de la Roche 2004: 2).Unfortunately, the incoherence of many typologies detracts from their utility.For example, consider three typologies based on the motive of theperpetrators. Chalk and Jonassohn (1990: 29) identify four types: genocide toeliminate a real or potential threat, to spread terror among real or potentialenemies, to acquire economic wealth, or to implement a belief, a theory, or anideology. Similarly, Fein’s (1993: 28–30) typology consists of ideological,retributive, developmental, and despotic genocide, and Smith’s (1987) ofretributive, institutional, utilitarian, monopolistic, and ideological genocide. Butas Straus (2001) notes, it is difficult to clearly apply these typologies even to themajor cases. For example, the Rwandan genocide was to eliminate a threat aswell as to implement an ideology; it was ideological as well as retributive(Straus 2001: 369).

Several recent typologies avoid the problems of motivational typologies byconsidering, as I do, variation in genocide itself. Melson (1992: 26), forinstance, distinguishes between massacre, partial genocide, and total genocideaccording to the proportion of the group that is killed and the extent towhich group identity is destroyed. Goldhagen (2009: 290) likewise distin-guishes ‘eliminationalist assaults’ based on the location (internal or external)and nature (over territory or not) of the contest. Other typologies aresimpler and identify only one dimension of variation as especially significant.Palmer (2000: 209–10) distinguishes between state genocides – those led andcarried out by the state – and societal genocides – those led and carried outmainly by civilians. Similarly, Straus (2001: 369–70) identifies two types ofgenocide, colonial genocide and revolutionary genocide, based on whether ornot they involve territorial invasion. I do not wish to criticize or replacethese typologies, which may be useful for various purposes. But what themultiplicity of typologies suggests is that genocide varies along multipleimportant dimensions, and an ideal typology is well-suited for examiningmultiple dimensions simultaneously. Many of the variable aspects of geno-cide I have identified even overlap with those identified by other typologies.For example, Melson focuses on the amount of killing, which is captured bythe concepts of intensiveness, scale, and indiscriminateness. Palmer focuseson the organization of the perpetrators, an independent variable in mytheory that is closely associated with the scale of genocide. And Straus’stypology, based on the presence of territorial invasion, should correlateclosely to ethnic selectivity, which would be high in revolutionary but low incolonial genocides. But though there is some overlap, the ideal typology pre-sented here is not simply a composite of these others. Like the definition onwhich it is based, it is informed by a general theory of violence and socialcontrol. It therefore helps us not just to classify genocides, but to explainthem.



Conclusion

To understand and explain genocide, we must allow for variation. We mustview genocide as a matter of degree, as this typology allows us to do. Forexample, while some scholars (e.g., Heinsohn 2000; Katz 1994; 2001; Rosenberg1987; Rubenstein 2001) view the Holocaust as unique in some sense, we haveseen that the Holocaust was instead the extreme case on a continuum ofgenocide – a hypergenocide characterized by an extreme degree of masskilling, unilateralism, and ethnic liability. Different from other cases in degreebut not kind, the Holocaust was not unique, and neither is genocide. Genocideis a form of social control with variable features, none unique or mysterious.Like warfare, genocide involves mass killing. Like lynching, it is unilateral.Like ethnic cleansing, it targets people based on their ethnicity. As thesefeatures vary, they distinguish genocide from other forms of social control, andthey distinguish genocides from one another.And since their variation is partlypredictable with the pure sociology of social control, we can explain theoccurrence of genocides and the forms that they take.

(Date accepted: August 2011)

Notes

1. I thank Donald Black, Jason Manning,Justin Snyder, and the three anonymousassessors for their helpful comments onearlier drafts.

2. This is sometimes misunderstood indiscussions of definitions of genocide. Forinstance, Chalk and Jonassohn say theyfound it ‘necessary’ to define genocide asperpetrated by ‘a state or other authority’ inorder ‘to deal with some cases in which theperpetrator was a local authority other thanthe state’ (1990: 26).This implies that certaincases are ‘genocides’ independent of anydefinition and that a definition must be for-mulated to include them. But no particulardefinition of genocide is ‘necessary’ and nocases are inherently genocidal; they aregenocides if they are defined as such.

3. The UN definition of genocide is like-wise difficult to apply. It too requires anintent to destroy, and because of this andother elements – such as its ambiguityabout what actions constitute genocide –those applying the definition often disagree

considerably. Hagan and Kaiser (2011a,2011b), for example, argue that forced dis-placements, such as those currently occur-ring in Darfur, are genocidal according tothe UN definition of genocide, but Allen(2011) and Shaw (2011) disagree.

4. This is not always the case, though. Asnoted, intensiveness is related to other vari-ables as well, so in some cases – especiallythe more extreme cases – the killers may goto a great deal of trouble to make sure theirtargets do not escape. During the Holocaust,for example, the Nazis often killed Jewsrather than allowing them to escape when itwas possible. Still, overall immobility waslow in this case, as options for expulsion hadalready been exhausted or closed off. Priorto the war, Nazi policies encouraged Jewishemigration, and 60 per cent of the Jewishpopulation in Germany left the countryduring this time (Dawidowicz 1975: 191).Even more would have left were it not forthe difficulty of obtaining permission fromdestination countries (Dawidowicz 1975:



189). Later, Nazis planned to deport Jewsfrom newly conquered territories to theLublin region of Poland, but then war withthe Soviet Union made this impossible(Weitz 2003: 129).

5. Other factors were also conducive topartisanship. For example, although the factthat black policemen engaged in genocideagainst other blacks may at first seeminconsistent with the theory, Aborigineswho served in the Native Police were actu-ally socially closer to their officers and towhites in general than to the Aboriginesthey killed. This was due to the social char-acteristics of Aboriginal societies and alsoto the manner in which the Native Policewere recruited. Aborigines were sociallyclose only to their kinsmen and near neigh-bours. They had no concept correspondingto ‘Aborigine’ or even ‘Australia’, anddistant Aborigines – especially those whospoke incomprehensible languages – werenormally treated as enemies responsible fordiseases and natural disasters (Reynolds1990: 80). And black troopers wererecruited from areas far away from thefrontier precisely so they would have nosympathy for local clans (Reynolds 1990:83). Any Aborigines they encountered onthe frontier were complete strangers differ-ing in language and other cultural practices.At the same time, they were socially closerto whites. The Native Police were recruitedfrom among the Aborigines living on thefringes of white society, where the menoften worked for whites as unpaid labour-ers and stockmen, and where the womenoften served as domestic servants or concu-bines (Reynolds 1990: 74).

6. But it was still not a case of absoluteunilateralism. Jews sometimes violentlyresisted the Nazis, even when they had nopossibility of success (see, for example, Ein-wohner 2003). Also, as Shaw points out,many Jews ‘joined the war against the Nazis,either in resistance groups or in Alliedarmies’ (2007: 32). Unilateralism, like theother aspects of genocide, is a matter ofdegree, and even in the most extreme cases,there are still some reciprocal elements.

7. Ethnicity itself is also variable – amatter of degree. Naimark notes that politi-cal groups or classes may be ‘ethnicized’(2010: 5). In such cases they begin to betreated as ethnic groups, as ‘inventednations’ (Naimark 2010: 29). For example,the kulaks, wealthy peasants in the SovietUnion, were depicted by Soviet propagandaas genetically inferior, and thus their rela-tives and children were also treated askulaks (Naimark 2010: 58–9).

8. But killing is even less selective thanthis when aggressors kill others in theprocess of killing their targets. In the Albig-ensian crusade, for example, when Catholicsmassacred the inhabitants of Béziers –where many of the Albigensian hereticsresided – they killed Catholics along withheretics. As Strayer (1990: 119) notes, anapocryphal story, that the aggressorsshouted, ‘Kill them all; God will know hisown!’, accurately captures the killers’ mood.Indiscriminate violence may be less selectivestill when people are attacked withoutregard to any social characteristic at all, as incases of ‘running amok’, where people go toa public place and begin indiscriminatelykilling people (Black 2011: 10).

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Genocide as a Matter of Degree

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