Social Scientific Inquiry Into Genocide and Mass Killing: From Unitary Outcome to Complex Processes

This article reviews social scientific research on the occurrence of genocide and mass killing, focusing on the underlying, contributing processes. Relevant studies are grouped by their primary analytic focus: (a) macro-level state and institutional processes, (b) political elites and policy decisio...

Full description

Saved in:

Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Annual review of sociology 2013-01, Vol.39 (1), p.69-84
Main Authors:	Owens, Peter B., Su, Yang, Snow, David A.
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	Analytics Decisions Definitions Genocide History and organization of sociology History and present state History, theory and methodology Killing Massacres Methodology Motivation Nazism Political Elites Political violence Risk and disasters sociology Social construction Social Constructionism Social interaction Social Participation Social Processes Social sciences Sociology Sociology of knowledge and sociology of culture Sociology of leisure and mass culture Victimology Victims Violence War
Online Access:	Get full text
Tags:	Add Tag No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!

Description
Summary:	This article reviews social scientific research on the occurrence of genocide and mass killing, focusing on the underlying, contributing processes. Relevant studies are grouped by their primary analytic focus: (a) macro-level state and institutional processes, (b) political elites and policy decisions, (c) nonelite perpetrator motivation and participation, (d) social construction of victim group identity, and (e) local and regional variation within larger episodes. We also discuss issues relating to the conceptualization and definition of genocide, the utilization of different sources of data, methodological tendencies, and general analytic trends. Although recent studies show a promising move toward greater analytic disaggregation and engagement with various causal processes and outcomes at the meso and micro levels, genocide scholars must broaden their theoretical engagement with parallel fields of inquiry, continue to be creative in locating original data sources, and account for both positive and negative cases.
ISSN:	0360-0572 1545-2115