Theoretical Paper: War and Genocide: A Sociological Approach

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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. Historical studies account for the vast majority of genocide research, and have provided the main foundations for our knowledge. Yet law often provides too narrow a focus, separating genocide from the “crimes against humanity” and “war crimes” with which it is intimately linked, and concerned with individual criminal responsibility rather than explanation. And historical studies tend to highlight the particularity of certain events rather than the commonalities that lead us to define a range of actions, by collective actors in situations separated by time and space, as “genocide.” Indeed, the majority of historical studies deal with a particular episode, the Holocaust, whose commonality with other genocides is often questioned by historians.

Genocide studies, therefore, require a sociological framework specifying that genocide is a type of social action and social relationship and explains its typical connections with other types of social action and structure. In recent books (Shaw 2003 and 2006), I have outlined a framework for understanding these two central and inter-related questions. My approach links genocide closely to war and it is this connection that is the primary focus of this article.

 The loss of the connection between war and genocide

It is evident that genocide was first recognized in the context of war: the word was invented by Lemkin to describe atrocities against civilians under Axis Rule in Occupied Europe (the title of his foundational 1944 book). As he described it, genocide was “a concentrated and coordinated attack upon all the elements of nationhood” among the various occupied peoples. Genocide was a warlike campaign, occurring in the context of war, but fundamentally opposed to legitimate warfare:

“Genocide is the antithesis of the ... doctrine (…) [which] holds that war is directed against sovereigns and armies, not against subjects and civilians. In its modern application in civilized society, the doctrine means that war is conducted against states and armed forces and not against populations. It required a long period of evolution in civilized society to mark the way from wars of extermination, which occurred in ancient times and in the Middle Ages, to the conception of wars as being essentially limited to activities against armies and states.” (Lemkin, 1944:80)

This seminal statement pinpointed the fact that identifying genocide as a criminal activity distinct from war still depended on the modern distinction between “civilized” and “uncivilized” warfare. Only by distinguishing between “sovereigns and armies” on the one hand, and “subjects and civilians” on the other, could genocide be differentiated from war. Although genocide should be defined as a crime sui generis, which might occur at least exceptionally in “peacetime” outside the context of more conventional warfare, it was in effect a new, modern form of the historic “wars of extermination.”

These connections of genocide with war, in terms of context and meaning, remained central to the first legal uses of the idea. Only because genocide occurred in the context of an aggressive war did the United Nations consider themselves entitled to prosecute Nazi leaders for it at Nuremberg. Yet in the subsequent definition of genocide as the supreme international crime, the UN separated it from war. Thus, Resolution 96(I) of the General Assembly, adopted unanimously on 11 December 1946, defined genocide as “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.” As William Schabas (2000:46) commented, this formulation eliminated “any nexus between genocide and armed conflict”; for him this was “the unfortunate legacy of the Nuremberg jurisprudence.” However, there is reason to question whether this was such a fortunate move. Although it was certainly important to emphasize the fundamental difference of genocide from legitimate war, and the difference between a deliberate attack on a civilian population as such and crimes (against civilians or soldiers) committed in the course of otherwise legitimate war, these formulations, culminating in the 1948 Genocide Convention, also mitigated understanding of the deep connections between these different types of action.

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