Abstract
The field of comparative genocide studies has grown beyond recognition over the past two decades, though more quantitatively than qualitatively. On the surface, everything looks good: the number of books on genocide has tripled within less than a decade; the field of comparative genocide studies has its own professional association and journals; more and more colleges and universities offer courses on genocide; several research institutions dedicated to the study of genocide have been established. If we are talking numbers, comparative genocide studies are indeed a great success. Upon close examination, however, genocide scholarship is ridden with contradictions. There is barely any other field of study that enjoys so little consensus on defining principles such as definition of genocide, typology, application of a comparative method, and timeframe. Considering that scholars have always put stress on prevention of genocide, comparative genocide studies have been a failure. Paradoxically, nobody has attempted so far to assess the field of comparative genocide studies as a whole. This is one of the reasons why those who define themselves as genocide scholars have not been able to detect the situation of crisis. This article looks at the conceptual and institutional development of comparative genocide scholarship and outlines major problems that its practitioners face.
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Notes
For the overview of the early scholarship on genocide see: F. Chalk, ‘Redefining Genocide’, in Genocide: Conceptual and Historical Dimensions, ed. G. Andreopoulos (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), p. 48.
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C. Merridale, Night of Stone: Death and Memory in Twentieth-Century Russia (New York: Viking, 2001).
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S. Totten and E. Markusen, ‘The US Government Darfur Genocide Investigation’, JGR, 7, 2 (2005), 279, 288–9.
C. Gerlach, ‘Extremely Violent Societies: An Alternative to the Concept of Genocide’, JGR, 8, 4 (2006), 455–71. By questioning the integrity and usefulness of comparative genocide studies, Gerlach had effectively reversed the conspiracy theory insinuated by Huttenbach with regard to Holocaust studies.
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Weiss-Wendt, A. (2008). Problems in Comparative Genocide Scholarship. In: Stone, D. (eds) The Historiography of Genocide. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230297784_3
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