Genocide as Social Practice

Daniel Feierstein, Douglas Andrew Town

• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780813563176
• eBook ISBN: 9780813571942
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Human Rights
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Genocide not only annihilates people but also destroys and reorganizes social relations, using terror as a method. In Genocide as Social Practice, social scientist Daniel Feierstein looks at the policies of state-sponsored repression pursued by the Argentine military dictatorship against political opponents between 1976 and 1983 and those pursued by the Third Reich between 1933 and 1945. He finds similarities, not in the extent of the horror but in terms of the goals of the perpetrators.The Nazis resorted to ruthless methods in part to stifle dissent but even more importantly to reorganize German society into a Volksgemeinschaft, or people’s community, in which racial solidarity would supposedly replace class struggle. The situation in Argentina echoes this. After seizing power in 1976, the Argentine military described its own program of forced disappearances, torture, and murder as a “process of national reorganization” aimed at remodeling society on “Western and Christian” lines.For Feierstein, genocide can be considered a technology of power—a form of social engineering—that creates, destroys, or reorganizes relationships within a given society. It influences the ways in which different social groups construct their identity and the identity of others, thus shaping the way that groups interrelate. Feierstein establishes continuity between the “reorganizing genocide” first practiced by the Nazis in concentration camps and the more complex version—complex in terms of the symbolic and material closure of social relationships —later applied in Argentina. In conclusion, he speculates on how to construct a political culture capable of confronting and resisting these trends.First published in Argentina, in Spanish, Genocide as Social Practice has since been translated into many languages, now including this English edition. The book provides a distinctive and valuable look at genocide through the lens of Latin America as well as Europe.

PART ONE

Some Theoretical Questions

1

Defining the Concept of Genocide

What I am is not important,

whether I live or die—It is the same for me,

the same for you.

What we do is important.

This is what I have learnt.

It is not what we are

but what we do.

—James Fenton, “Children in Exile”¹

The annihilation of population masses is an age-old phenomenon. The destruction of Troy by the Greeks, the razing of Carthage by the Romans, and the atrocities of the Mongols under Genghis Khan are just a few examples that can be found in any history book. Genocide, on the other hand, is a distinctly modern concept. The term “genocide” was first used by the Polish-Jewish legal scholar Raphael Lemkin at a conference in Madrid in 1933, but a legal definition of genocide was not incorporated into international law until 1948, following the programs of mass murder carried out by the Nazis during World War II. These programs included the extermination of such diverse groups as the Jewish and Gypsy populations of Europe, ethnic Poles and Russians, political opponents, children and adults with disabilities, homosexuals, and religious groups such as Jehovah’s Witnesses, among others.

The first question we need to address, then, is whether genocide is simply a new name for an old practice or whether it refers to something qualitatively different from earlier mass annihilation processes. The model of genocide presented in this book suggests a distinctly modern phenomenon, first appearing in the nineteenth century although rooted in the early modern period (circa A.D. 1500 to 1800). The forced exodus of large numbers of Jews and Muslims from Spain in 1492 and the subsequent persecution of those who converted to Catholicism in order to escape expulsion is perhaps the earliest precursor of modern genocide, together with the European witch trials of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The distinguishing features of modern genocide are the ways in which it is legitimized as well as its consequences not only for the targeted groups but also for the perpetrators, the witnesses, and society as a whole.²

My contention is that modern genocides have been a deliberate attempt to change the identity of the survivors by modifying relationships within a given society. This is what sets modern genocide apart from earlier massacres of civilian populations, as well as from other processes of mass destruction. The fact that genocide has proved so effective in bringing about social changes—equaled only by revolutionary processes—suggests that it is not simply a spontaneous occurrence that reappears when historical circumstances are favorable. Rather, it is a process that starts long before and ends long after the actual physical annihilation of the victims, even though the exact moment at which any social practice commences or ceases to play a role in the “workings” of a society is always uncertain. It is important to bear this fact in mind if we are to develop effective early warning systems to prevent new instances of genocide.

Problems of Definition

More than half a century separates the drafting of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted on December 9, 1948, and the complex sentences handed down by the international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda in the second half of the 1990s. Before and during this time and afterward, debates have raged among sociologists and historians over definitions that would allow for empirical research. This suggests that the concept of genocide is essentially problematic.

The term “genocide”, as coined by Lemkin, is a hybrid between the Greek root genos (family, tribe, or race) and the Latin suffix -cide (killing), but its exact meaning and translation into other languages remain controversial. Does genos refer to a common tribal origin, to genetic characteristics transmitted from generation to generation, or simply to certain features shared by a group? All these meanings are present in the Greek word genos and its Latin derivative gens denoting a family clan.

Reviewing the various legal, sociological, and historical definitions of genocide, M. Bjørnlund et al. found that the fundamental point of agreement was “the systematic annihilation of a population group as such,” while the three main points of disagreement were the question of “intent,” the nature of the groups included in these definitions, and the importance of actual physical annihilation, whether total or partial, as an essential element of genocide.³

Significantly, nearly all of these scholarly definitions take Article II of the 1948 Genocide Convention as their starting point:

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

As Martin Shaw has pointed out, “The study of genocide has generally been framed by legal and historical, rather than sociological perspectives. Law provided the impetus to the definition of the crime, through the pioneering efforts of Raphael Lemkin and the drafters of the United Nations Convention; it has continued to provide much of the drive towards recognition of recent genocides, in the work of the international criminal tribunals for former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.”⁴

However, this predominantly legal approach is unfortunate in that legal definitions tend to be narrowly focused, rooted in specific historical contexts, and difficult to modify. Law requires unambiguous categories as well as clear and convincing evidence in order to reach a judgment of guilty or not guilty. The categories established by the 1948 Genocide Convention, in particular its list of protected groups, were the result of political compromise but also a consequence of the jurisprudence of the Nuremberg Tribunal set up in 1945 to punish Nazi war criminals. The Nuremberg Tribunal held that the crimes against humanity required a connection with aggressive war, although it is now generally accepted that these crimes—like genocide itself—can be committed in peacetime.

In fact, any new legal definition of genocide will need to include the principle of equality before the law—a principle currently violated by the 1948 Genocide Convention, which protects some groups and not others—as well as incorporating the customary law that has emerged from the history of relations among human communities. In other words, any legal definition of genocide—beyond what has been achieved so far in international law—needs to be based on the concept of genocide in its unbiased sense, namely, the implementation of a massive and systematic plan intended to destroy all or part of a human group as such. In legal terms, modern genocide would be no different from the annihilation of population masses by the Ancient Greeks, Romans, or Mongols, and I will presume the legal definition to be inclusive in this way.

Genocide as a Social Practice

In contrast to the legal definition of genocide, the concept of genocide as a social practice allows historians and sociologists to adopt a broader and more flexible approach to the problems of causality and responsibility. It also helps to distinguish genocide from other social processes of mass destruction that have occurred at different periods of history, such as high death rates among certain segments of the population as the result of economic policies, or the more or less intentional destruction of the environment that has led to mass deaths.

Now, despite the obvious differences between law and the social sciences, we should point out that it is organization, training, practice, legitimation, and consensus that distinguish genocide as a social practice from other more spontaneous or less intentional acts of killing and mass destruction. Also, because a social practice is composed of shared beliefs and understandings as well as shared actions, a genocidal social practice may be one that contributes to genocide or attempted genocide, including symbolic representations and discourses promoting or justifying genocide.

In addition, it is clear from this definition that social practices are ongoing and under permanent construction. In many instances, the appropriateness of the term “genocide” has been questioned on the grounds that the process has not gone far enough to speak of full-blown genocide. But when does genocide actually begin? At what moment can we consider that the term is being correctly applied? Adopting the concept of genocidal social practices allows us to address a thorny methodological issue in history and the social sciences, namely, that of periodization. Moreover, because social practices are constructions that are open to deconstruction, academic studies should be able to contribute to policies to prevent and resist genocide.

Bearing all this in mind, I will define a genocidal social practice as a technology of power—a way of managing people as a group—that aims (1) to destroy social relationships based on autonomy and cooperation by annihilating a significant part of the population (significant in terms of either numbers or practices), and (2) to use the terror of annihilation to establish new models of identity and social relationships among the survivors. Unlike what happens in war, the disappearance of the victims forces the survivors to deny their own identity—an identity created out of a synthesis of being and doing—while a way of life that once defined a specific form of identity is suppressed. Accordingly, I will use the term “genocidal social practices” to distinguish these specific processes from the legal concept of genocide.⁵

The Legal Definition of Genocide: Law as a Producer of Truth

As mentioned earlier, the most widely accepted legal definition of genocide today is that approved by the United Nations in the 1948 Genocide Convention. It is therefore important to understand the debates surrounding Article II of the Convention and, in particular, the question of protected groups.

In 1946 the United Nations had called upon member states to define a new criminal category, stating that

[g]enocide is a denial of the right of existence of entire human groups, as homicide is the denial of the right to live of individual human beings; such denial of the right of existence shocks the conscience of mankind, results in great losses to humanity in the form of cultural and other contributions represented by these groups, and is contrary to moral law and to the spirit and aims of the United Nations. Many instances of such crimes of genocide have occurred when racial, religious, political and other groups have been destroyed, entirely or in part. The punishment of the crime of genocide is a matter of international concern. (UN General Assembly Resolution 96 [I])

This resolution contained two significant elements. First, it contemplated the genocide of political groups; and second, it defined genocide through an analogy with homicide. The definition established the characteristics of the event through the type of crime committed (collective killing against individual killing) and not through the characteristics of the victims: “racial, religious and political” are simply examples, and the term “other” completes the categorization. For the same reason, the resolution did not define any criminal type, either.

At the drafting stage of the Convention, however, it was clear that the inclusion of social and political groups would jeopardize the acceptance of the Convention by a large number of states that did not want the international community to become involved in their internal political struggles.⁶ The Soviet Union, Poland, Great Britain, and South Africa (among other states) were worried that enforcement of the Convention might violate principles of state sovereignty and nonintervention if such groups were to be included as targets of genocide.⁷ As Ward Churchill notes, these countries sought to “narrow the Convention’s definitional parameters of genocide in such ways as were necessary to exclude many of their own past, present and anticipated policies and practices from being formally codified as crimen laesae humanitatis (crimes against humanity) in international law.”⁸

On the other hand, France, Yugoslavia, Bolivia, Haiti, and Cuba (among other states) insisted that the exclusion of political and social groups would allow most crimes of genocide to go unpunished. Donnedieu de Vabres, the primary French judge during the Nuremberg trials after World War II, argued that the express exclusion of political groups might be interpreted as legitimizing crimes against them.

At the drafting stage of the Convention, then, three key issues were raised: (1) whether the definition of genocide should be universal (like any other criminal categorization) or limited to certain groups; (2) whether the limitation was an aid to facilitate the approval of the Convention by the largest possible number of states; and (3) whether leaving certain groups explicitly out of the categorization might not represent a way of legitimating their annihilation.

Raphael Lemkin, who had played an important part in drafting the Convention, overcame the deadlock in the negotiations by arguing that political groups should be excluded because they lacked the cohesion or permanence of other groups. After arduous negotiations, it was finally decided that the protection of political and other excluded groups should be guaranteed by national legislations and by a Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Thus, the United Nations defined genocide as a new legal typology, explicitly stated in Article II of the Convention. But by excluding political groups, the definition of genocide became arbitrarily restrictive. For example, religious belief systems were protected, whereas political belief systems were not. Worse still, the exclusion of political groups together with the “intent to destroy” requirement created an almost perfect catch-22.⁹ In order to prove “intent,” the prosecution had to demonstrate the existence of a coordinated plan. But coordinated plans are made by politicians or military commanders with political power. So, if the prosecution succeeded in proving “intent,” the defense could argue that political leaders had targeted political opponents and so could not be tried under the Genocide Convention.

The question also arises how the intention to destroy a group in part—as opposed to in whole—can be anything but political. Lemkin himself recognized that genocide can pave the way for political domination: “Genocide has two phases: one, destruction of the national pattern of the oppressed group; the other, the imposition of the national pattern of the oppressor. This imposition, in turn, may be made upon the oppressed population which is allowed to remain or upon the territory alone, after removal of the population and the colonization by the oppressor’s own nationals.”¹⁰

As Donnedieu de Vabres predicted, it was...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Bridging the Gap between Two Genocides
• Part One: Some Theoretical Questions
• Part Two: Historical Foundations: the Nazi Genocide
• Part Three: Toward a Historical Basis: Genocidal Social Practices in Argentina
• Notes
• Index
• About the Author