Governments, Citizens, and Genocide: A Comparative and Interdisciplinary [Hardcover]

Alex Alvarez (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0253338492 | ISBN-13: 978-0253338495 | Publication Date: April 1, 2001

Governments, Citizens, and Genocide
A Comparative and Interdisciplinary Approach

Alex Alvarez

A comprehensive analysis demonstrating how whole societies come to support the practice of genocide.

"Alex Alvarez has produced an exceptionally comprehensive and useful analysis of modern genocide... [It] is perhaps the most important interdisciplinary account to appear since Zygmunt Bauman's classic work, Modernity and the Holocaust."
—Stephen Feinstein, Director, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies

"Alex Alvarez has written a first-rate propaedeutic on the running sore of genocide. The singular merit of the work is its capacity to integrate a diverse literature in a fair-minded way and to take account of genocides in the post-Holocaust environment ranging from Cambodia to Serbia. The work reveals patterns of authoritarian continuities of repression and rule across cultures that merit serious and widespread public concern." —Irving Louis Horowitz, Rutgers University

More people have been killed in 20th-century genocides than in all wars and revolutions in the same period. Recent events in countries such as Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia have drawn attention to the fact that genocide is a pressing contemporary problem, one that has involved the United States in varying negotiating and peace-keeping roles. Genocide is increasingly recognized as a threat to national and international security, as well as a source of tremendous human suffering and social devastation.

Governments, Citizens, and Genocide views the crime of genocide through the lens of social science. It discusses the problem of defining genocide and then examines it from the levels of the state, the organization, and the individual. Alex Alvarez offers both a skillful synthesis of the existing literature on genocide and important new insights developed from the study of criminal behavior. He shows that governmental policies and institutions in genocidal states are designed to suppress the moral inhibitions of ordinary individuals.

By linking different levels of analysis, and comparing a variety of cases, the study provides a much more complex understanding of genocide than have prior studies. Based on lessons drawn from his analysis, Alvarez offers an important discussion of the ways in which genocide might be anticipated and prevented.

Alex Alvarez is Associate Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Northern Arizona University. His primary research interests are minorities, crime, and criminal justice, as well as collective and interpersonal violence. He is author of articles in Journal of Criminal Justice, Social Science History, and Sociological Imagination and is currently writing a book on patterns of American murder.

April 2001
240 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4, bibl., index
cloth 0-253-33849-2 $29.95 s / £22.95

Contents
The Age of Genocide
A Crime By Any Other Name
Deadly Regimes
Lethal Cogs
Accommodating Genocide
Confronting Genocide

=

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This is a disturbing account of a crime that has plagued humankind throughout recorded history. As Alvarez (criminal justice, Northern Arizona Univ.) notes, Genocides do not suddenly happen, nor are they precipitated by age-old animosity between groups. Rather, they are the result of conscious choices made by political and military leaders. The author then takes the reader on an excursion into the political, social, legal, and military justifications employed by governments in the 20th century to justify mass killings of essentially innocent human beings. He begins his investigation with the massacre of the Armenians in Turkey after WW I and ends with a discussion of the Balkan genocides in the 1990s. The author goes into meticulous detail about the Nazi and Imperial Japanese mass killings in WW II, Stalin's great purges of the Russian peasantry in the 1930s, and the Cambodian genocide by the Pol Pot regime in the 1970s. Alvarez maintains that nationalism and the concept of sovereignty are driving forces behind most acts of genocide. Academic collections." —J. C. Watkins, Jr., University of Alabama, Choice, November 2001

(J. C. Watkins, Jr., University of Alabama Choice 2001)

About the Author

Alex Alvarez earned his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of New Hampshire in 1991 and is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Northern Arizona University. His primary areas of study have focused on minorities, crime, and criminal justice, as well as on collective and interpersonal violence. He has published on Native Americans, Latinos, and African Americans, fear of crime, sentencing, justifiable and criminal homicide, and genocide. He is currently writing a book on patterns of American murder.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Indiana University Press (April 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0253338492
• ISBN-13: 978-0253338495
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #803,967 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Dr. Alex Alvarez earned his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of New Hampshire in 1991 and is a Professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Northern Arizona University. From 2001 until 2003 he was the founding Director of the Martin-Springer Institute for Teaching the Holocaust, Tolerance, and Humanitarian Values. His main areas of study are in the areas of collective and interpersonal violence, including homicide and genocide. His first book, Governments, Citizens, and Genocide was published by Indiana University Press in 2001 and was a nominee for the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences book of the year award in 2002, as well as a Raphael Lemkin book award nominee from the International Association of Genocide Scholars in 2003. His other books include Murder American Style (2002), Violence: the Enduring Problem (2008), and Genocidal Crimes (2009). He has also served as an editor for the journal Violence and Victims, was a founding co-editor of the journal Genocide Studies and Prevention, was a co-editor of the H-Genocide List Serve, and is an editorial board member for the journals War Crimes, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity: An International Journal, and Idea: A Journal of Social Issues. He has been invited to present his research in various countries such as Austria, Bosnia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden. Dr. Alvarez also gives presentations and workshops on various issues such as violence, genocide, and bullying.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It's About Time, March 15, 2001

By 

Ronet Bachman (Newark, Delaware USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Governments, Citizens, and Genocide: A Comparative and Interdisciplinary (Hardcover)

Dr. Alvarez's synthesis of the literature on genocide from a sociological and criminological perspective is unprecendented. This is not only a work that will inform the academic literature, but one that should also be used to inform public policy. It is in this sense that Dr. Alvarez has not only succeeded as a scholar, but as a humanitarian as well.