Predicting violence within genocide: A model of elite competition and ethnic segregation from Rwanda

Can we predict when and where violence will likely break out within cases of genocide? I present a theoretical model to help identify areas susceptible and resistant to violence during genocide. The model conceptualizes violence onset as a function of elite competition for control of the state from above and the ethnic segregation of society from below. First, in areas where extremist elite control is weak, violence is delayed or averted because a contest for control between pro-violence elites and anti-violence moderates arises and the competition takes time to resolve. Where control is strong, violence is immediate or early because extremists face little competition and can rapidly deploy the state's coercive resources against targeted groups. Second, in areas where the integration of ethnic groups is high, violence is delayed because it takes time to break existing interethnic bonds and destroy bridging social capital. Cohesive communities resist elite attempts to divide them through interethnic trust and cooperation. I test the model by examining sub-national variation in genocide onset across Rwanda's 145 communes using new data and duration analysis. I additionally explore causal mechanisms by within-case analyses comparing early and late onset in two communes. The findings have implications for international policy makers as they respond to genocides and strategically prioritize limited intervention resources.     

Beyond identifying elites: Feasting as a means to understand early Middle Formative society on the Pacific Coast of Mexico

Feasts provide a public forum where social statuses can be affirmed or challenged among pre-state societies. Documenting feasting behavior thus provides insight into the construction of prehistoric political power. This paper presents expected material patterns of feasting by focusing on intra-site variability in food preparation, presentation, and consumption. Expectations are evaluated by comparing ceramic, ground stone, obsidian, and faunal data recovered from Conchas phase (900–800 BCE) elite and village midden deposits at Cuauhtémoc in the Soconusco region of southern Mexico. I argue that elite feasting at Cuauhtémoc created political cohesion between elite and non-elite segments of society during the Conchas phase as a new polity emerged that was more socially stratified and politically hierarchical than anything previously known in the region.     

Reenacting ethnic cleansing: people's history and elitist nationalism in contemporary Poland

This article addresses the problem of the present‐day historical discourse in Poland by taking under scrutiny one specific event: the historical re‐enactment of the ethnic cleansing of Polish villagers by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, staged in a small town in southeastern Poland, Radymno, in the summer of 2013. It is based on research, carried out by the author and a group of students in Radymno and its surroundings in the period preceding and following the performance, as well as on content analysis of the press. The comparison of the top‐down political and mass media discourse with local responses to the idea of re‐enactment and, more broadly, local understandings of Polish–Ukrainian relations, reveal many contradictions. In attempting to understand them, the article discusses broader ramifications of the ‘democratization of history’: the political contestation, class rhetoric and societal tensions that are tangled up in historical debates.     

Exploitation,fascist violence and social cleansing: a study of Franco's concentration camps from a comparative perspective

One of the most noticeable topics within recent Spanish historiography is the analysis of processes of mass violence. Salient among these were the Franco concentration camps, a violent re-educational system made up of more than 180 camps, 104 of which were permanent. The camps operated from 1936 until 1947, under the control of Franco's army, with its corresponding regime of forced labour and exploitation of prisoners of war. Half a million Spaniards and Europeans experienced first hand the Spanish version of the fascist concentration-camp system. This article offers an analysis of the inside history of Franco's concentration camps and then locates them comparatively within a theoretical and empirical Fascist model of internment, exploitation and violence.     

The modernizing bias of human rights: stories of mass killings and genocide in Central America

This article analyses selected cases of mass killings and genocide during the civil wars in El Salvador and Guatemala in the 1980s and the way in which the truth commissions in both countries reframed locally grounded narratives to fit the state-centred language of human rights. Redefining wrongdoings as human rights violations produces stories that communicate poorly with local worldviews because the 'truths' that human rights language proposes disregard local realities and transform local conflicts into a type of 'modern', nationwide struggles. Thus, while the concept of genocide might capture well the horrendous nature of a mass killing, it will also ethnify the conflict. Comparisons between local readings and human rights-based reinterpretations reveal a 'modernizing' or 'Westernizing' bias of international law; the article argues for more awareness about such effects in analysis as well as in policy-making.     

The violence of space and spaces of violence: Peace as violence in unequal and divided spaces

Peace is a spatio-social and temporal experience, dependent on a number of variables that are influenced by positionality and privilege. Often “peaceful” spaces are inherently violent due to racism, sexism, classism, ableism, transphobia, homophobia, and agism among other forms of oppression. This article presents the conceptualisation of the violence of space, as a means by which inequalities are maintained spatially and socially, and demonstrates how in Cape Town, South Africa this exacerbates displacement and reinforces the persistence of violence in townships and informal settlements or temporal and physical spaces of violence. Empirically, through thematic analysis I evidence the conceptualisation of peace without justice as a form of violence through participant narratives of movement and use of space in the post-apartheid city. Using a spatial lens, I demonstrate how these inequalities perpetuate violence and observe the work still to be done in addressing maintained transgenerational inequalities. I utilise interviews with a range of actors working across different city spaces to demonstrate the violence of maintained divides with a specific focus on materialisations of violence, both structural and direct violence, in the areas of housing and transport. In this paper I also highlight organisation and resistance to inequalities, while overall, arguing that the product of the violence of space and spaces of violence is a violent peace whereby engineered poverty and systemic inequalities are maintained.     

Geographic aspects of genocide: a comparison of Bosnia and Rwanda

The study of genocide requires a geographic approach that looks at how genocidal actions are purposefully planned to target specific groups and areas, methodically implemented through expulsions and murder, and politically intertwined with popular aspirations of territorial nationalism. A geographic focus is used here to discuss the concept of genocide, its recurrence in the twentieth century, its formulation under international law, and its eruption in Bosnia and Rwanda. In this comparative approach, geography-linked concepts such as Lebensraum , territorial nationalism, forced migration, and ethnic cleansing are used to explain the production of genocide and its consequences.     

From ethnic cleansing to affirmative action: exploring Poland's struggle with its Ukrainian minority (1944–89)*

ABSTRACT. The ambivalent attitude of Poland's communist leadership towards Poland's minorities – on the one hand violent and severely repressive, while on the other hand allowing for controlled liberties and offering protection – is the main focus of this article. In the mid‐1940s, Poland's new communist leadership proceeded to expel and deport millions of Germans, Lithuanians, Belarusians and Ukrainians from their native territories. A decade later, the communist government adopted a policy that aimed at the reduction of discrimination and the creation of equal social and economic opportunities for the country's residual minority populations. This article explores the background of the wavering communist nationalities policies by focusing on Poland's Ukrainians. It demonstrates how the seemingly contradictory policies of ethnic cleansing and affirmative action were prompted by the same underlying political motivations.     

Hate-crimes as racial violence: a critique of the exceptional

Violence on the one hand is taken as something natural and normal. On the other hand, certain violent actions, such as hate-crimes, are portrayed as forms of exceptional violence, while systemic inequalities are rendered ordinary. In this paper, I de-naturalize the concept of violence through a critical evaluation of hate-crimes. I argue that the concept of hate-crimes has been, or is at risk, of being co-opted by a more sustained effort to ignore and downplay racial inequalities in society. Drawing on the philosophical distinction between ‘killing’ and ‘letting die’, I contend that an exclusive focus on individual-based hate-crimes deflects attention from the systemic, structural inequalities of society; and that a narrow conceptualization of violence (as direct, intentional action) conforms to a more expansive neoliberal promotion of a ‘race-blind’ or ‘colour-blind’ criminal justice system.     

Surviving in the margins of a genocide case in the making: recognizing the economy of testimony at stake in research on political violence

ABSTRACT

In this article, we aim to draw attention to the hopes, frustrations and disillusions that so-called ‘transitional justice’ projects produce in drastically poor, war-torn, historically marginalized but politicized Indigenous communities. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research we conducted separately between 1982 and 2010 in Guatemala and Mexico, we describe the ways in which the world came to know about Finca San Francisco’s massacre, committed by the Guatemalan army on 17 July 1982, as part of its scorched earth policy. We then look at the various forms of reparations its survivors have been the subject of. In so doing, we focus more specifically on how the Center for Human Rights Legal Action (CALDH), the non-governmental human rights organization that was behind the Ríos Montt genocide case, mobilized Finca San Francisco’s massacre survivors to become participants in the trial. After examining how the survivors of Finca San Francisco responded to CALDH’s mobilization efforts, we reflect on the kind of ‘gift’ these survivors expected in return for their stories of annihilation and destruction. Our goal is to bring to light the ‘economy of testimony’ that human rights activists, journalists or social scientists become entangled in once they ask genocide survivors to testify about the brutal deaths of their loved ones.     

The model of ethnic democracy: Israel as a Jewish and democratic state

The liberal democratic nation–state is on the decline in the West as a result of globalisation, regionalisation, universalisation of minority rights, multiculturalism and the rise of ethno–nationalism. While Western countries are decoupling the nation–state and shifting toward multicultural civic democracy, other countries are consolidating an alternative non–civic form of a democratic state that is identified with and subservient to a single ethnic nation. This model, ‘ethnic democracy’, is presented; its defining features, the circumstances leading to it and the conditions for its stability are elaborated upon; and it is applied to Israel. Contrary to its self–image and international reputation as a Western liberal democracy, Israel is an ethnic democracy in which the Jews appropriate the state and make it a tool for advancing their national security, demography, public space, culture and interests. At the same time, Israel is a democracy that extends various kinds of rights to 1 million Palestinian Arab citizens (16 per cent of the population) who are perceived as a threat. The criticisms against the general model and its applicability to Israel are discussed. The model has already been applied to other countries, but more applications are needed in order to develop it further.     

It's safe: food as a way of expression for children in Warsaw

ABSTRACT

The role of food in family relations is often discussed with a focus on discipline and control. This paper shows how food can also be used to create children’s safe spaces, defined as the social conditions that allow relatively independent expression of opinions, emotions and practices. Based on ethnographic research conducted with families in Warsaw in 2012–2013, I discuss different ways in which food is used to create and express such safe spaces. Firstly, I look at how children use food to create their own, personal and hidden safe space, in opposition to parental rule. Secondly, I analyse how food is used to build a safe space between adults and children. I argue that within often antagonistic family food relations there is in fact a space for children’s expression. Thirdly, I discuss the role of food in creating safe spaces for children during the research process. This paper takes a relational approach to the concept of safe space, and considers what kind of social relations and processes enable children’s autonomous expression with the means of food.     

From adversaries to allies: ethnic gerrymandering and ethnic party behaviour in local elections in Macedonia

Constitutional designers often construct political institutions to provide greater autonomy to ethnic minority groups. One tool available to constitutional designers is ‘ethnic gerrymandering’, where the boundaries of local government units are altered to provide greater representation to minority groups. This paper analyses the effects of changes in the ethnic composition of municipalities, which occur as a result of ethnic gerrymandering, on ethnic party behaviour. I compare ethnic party behaviour in local elections in the Republic of Macedonia from 2000 to 2013. I expand on a theory initially proposed by Sherrill Stroschein linking ethnic demography to ethnic party behaviour. I find that changes in the ethnic composition of municipalities influence whether rival ethnic parties engage in outbidding or whether ethnic communities unite behind a single ethnic party. My findings have important implications for those tasked with designing political institutions in ethnically divided societies.     

Mendicants as victims: scale,scope and the idiom of violence

This article establishes the scale of violence perpetrated against mendicant friars in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Europe, and provides a list of these events in an on-line appendix. It underscores and analyses the wide variety of contexts in which such incidents took place and examines the ramifications for the history of the mendicant orders and medieval urban society generally. Violence was a subtler form of communicative action than is sometimes recognised, and the paper points to the inverse relationship between power and violence in medieval urban conflicts.     

Mendicants as victims: scale,scope and the idiom of violence

This article establishes the scale of violence perpetrated against mendicant friars in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Europe, and provides a list of these events in an on-line appendix. It underscores and analyses the wide variety of contexts in which such incidents took place and examines the ramifications for the history of the mendicant orders and medieval urban society generally. Violence was a subtler form of communicative action than is sometimes recognised, and the paper points to the inverse relationship between power and violence in medieval urban conflicts.     

Still a long way to go: gender and feminist geographies in France

Abstract

After recalling some specific elements of the French gender debate, such as French feminism, which threatens the war of the sexes and the fear of indifference, this article distinguishes three moments in the geography of gender in France. The first moment forgotten is the emergence of research on women’s work and urban mobility from a Marxist and feminist materialist perspective. The second, at odds with the first, is distinguished by an approach that is more cultural than social, an inspiration that borrows from the linguistic shift and postmodernism, and that may have its references among the English-speaking authors of radical geography and feminist geography. The last is a moment of consolidation and diversification of themes (masculinities, sexualities, the body) and approaches (queer geography, black feminism, intersectionality). The article then highlights two challenges. The first is to sustain gender by consolidating achievements, developing gender education and promoting gender mainstreaming in all aspects of research. The second is to create common ground and develop solidarity in a context of profound transformations in higher education and research.