As I suggested in my previous post, statistical measures and concepts are one set of analytical tools that can be useful for a variety of research purposes. This can even be true with regard to research on phenomena that, while quantifiable (all phenomena have quantity), are difficult or impossible to measure in a highly enumerated fashion. (Take the example of kinship. One could measure the presence or absence of matrilineality. One could count up the number of households or family groups practicing matrilineality in a given community. One could assess in rough terms whether filiation is strongly or weakly matrilineal. It’s difficult to imagine how one would precisely measure matrilineality on a numerical scale, though.)
One important statistical concept is that of central tendency, and central tendency measures can be usefully applied to a variety of quantities, including some non-enumerable entities.
For example, in his textbook Traditional Cultures, Glenn King uses the notion of modal patterns as a central measure of broad cultural patterns for a variety of world areas. This is not a “normative” approach to the representation of cultures and culture areas in the sense of presenting universal patterns that inevitably essentialize and homogenize the areas in question. Instead, King is careful to point out the identification of a modal pattern simply means to identify for any particular component of culture the pattern that is more common than any other for the spatial frame of reference at hand, and that almost by definition, to speak of modal patterns is to recognize that there will be exceptions, perhaps copious exceptions, to the identified central tendency.
The mode is a particularly useful central tendency measure for phenomena that are hard or impossible to enumerate. Take kinship again. One could say (and King’s textbook does) that among Eastern Native North Americans prior to European contact, matrilineality was the modal pattern, and that’s a useful piece of information. On the other hand, with this and much other information anthropologists are interested in, I’m not sure how one would usefully apply other central tendency measures – so I’m definitely not arguing for over-statisticalization of the discipline. For example, what would a mean or median kinship system be? (I suppose one could take possible rough measures of degree of filiation, rank them on an arbitrary scale, e.g. 1= strong patrilineal filiation, 2= weak patrilineal filiation, 3=bilateral or bilineal filiation, 4= weak matrilineal filiation, 5=strong matrilineal filiation, and collect mean or median tendencies on that basis, but that strikes me as exceedingly artificial and I’m at a loss to imagine the use for such figures.)
Even in cases where statistical concepts and measures (whether in basic terms as I’ve been discussing or through the use of more complex analyses and tests) are useful, scholarship remains simultaneously intrinsically qualitative.
To assess modal tendencies is to first define what entities are to be assessed as present or not and counted. With something like kinship, different tendencies could potentially be measured depending on whether one focused on individuals, households, or families (with those last two needing careful definition in research planning and interpretation as well). To create a hypothetical situation, I could imagine that many Iroquois communities experienced transformations in the early 19th century, through influence of things like religious conversion and revitalization, inter-marriage with Anglos, the encroachment of white settlers, etc., where within communities there may have been co-presence of many small bilaterally-trending neolocal households alongside a small number of large matrilineal matrilocal households. In some communities at certain points of time, there may have been no clear modal pattern – or rather multiple modal patterns might have co-existed. For example, the modal household may have been small and neolocal, while the modal individual may have lived in a large matrilocal household. For such a purely hypothetical context, both would be important measures that would depend on attention to qualitative details in order to be assessable.
Lastly, I am arguing for transcendence of the false qualitative/quantitative divide in social science and humanities research. I’m also arguing that as part of this statistical concepts and analysis can provide one set of tools for many research purposes, including with data that are not particularly amenable to enumeration.
I’m not arguing at all that statistics are the answer to everything. As with any task, the proper analytical tools to use depend on the task at hand. Something statistics are the wrong tool, and sometimes it’s overkill.
Showing posts with label Native Americans. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Native Americans. Show all posts
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Beringia and Human Migration to the Americas
Anyone interested in the ongoing debates about human migration into the Americas may want to take a look at a recent news article at Science Daily, New Ideas About Human Migration From Asia To Americas. The article reports on a recent study by Ripan Malhi and colleagues at the University of Illinois published in the Public Library of Science.
The following is from the Science Daily article:
“What puzzled them originally was the disconnect between recent archaeological datings. New evidence places Homo sapiens at the Yana Rhinoceros Horn Site in Siberia – as likely a departure point for the migrants as any in the region – as early as 30,000 years before the present, but the earliest archaeological site at the southern end of South America is dated to only 15,000 years ago.
“These archaeological dates suggested two likely scenarios,” the authors wrote: Either the ancestors of Native Americans peopled Beringia before the Last Glacial Maximum, but remained locally isolated – likely because of ecological barriers – until entering the Americas 15,000 years before the present (the Beringian incubation model, BIM); or the ancestors of Native Americans did not reach Beringia until just before 15,000 years before the present, and then moved continuously on into the Americas, being recently derived from a larger parent Asian population (direct colonization model, DCM).
“Thus, for this study the team set out to test the two hypotheses: one, that Native Americans’ ancestors moved directly from Northeast Asia to the Americas; the other, that Native American ancestors were isolated from other Northeast Asian populations for a significant period of time before moving rapidly into the Americas all the way down to Tierra del Fuego.
“Our data supports the second hypothesis: The ancestors of Native Americans peopled Beringia before the Last Glacial Maximum, but remained locally isolated until entering the Americas at 15,000 years before the present.”
“The team’s findings appear in a recent issue of the Public Library of Science in an article titled, “Beringian Standstill and Spread of Native American Founders.”
The following is from the Science Daily article:
“What puzzled them originally was the disconnect between recent archaeological datings. New evidence places Homo sapiens at the Yana Rhinoceros Horn Site in Siberia – as likely a departure point for the migrants as any in the region – as early as 30,000 years before the present, but the earliest archaeological site at the southern end of South America is dated to only 15,000 years ago.
“These archaeological dates suggested two likely scenarios,” the authors wrote: Either the ancestors of Native Americans peopled Beringia before the Last Glacial Maximum, but remained locally isolated – likely because of ecological barriers – until entering the Americas 15,000 years before the present (the Beringian incubation model, BIM); or the ancestors of Native Americans did not reach Beringia until just before 15,000 years before the present, and then moved continuously on into the Americas, being recently derived from a larger parent Asian population (direct colonization model, DCM).
“Thus, for this study the team set out to test the two hypotheses: one, that Native Americans’ ancestors moved directly from Northeast Asia to the Americas; the other, that Native American ancestors were isolated from other Northeast Asian populations for a significant period of time before moving rapidly into the Americas all the way down to Tierra del Fuego.
“Our data supports the second hypothesis: The ancestors of Native Americans peopled Beringia before the Last Glacial Maximum, but remained locally isolated until entering the Americas at 15,000 years before the present.”
“The team’s findings appear in a recent issue of the Public Library of Science in an article titled, “Beringian Standstill and Spread of Native American Founders.”
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Language Extinction and Global Patterns
National Geographic online has posted an interesting (and depressing) article on language extinction, noting the presence of five global “hotspots” for the extinction of languages currently spoken by only small numbers of individuals. These hotspots are: the Northwest Coast of North America, Oklahoma, Central South America, Northeast Asia, and Northern Australia, which is also to say that Native American, Siberian, and Australian Aboriginal languages in particular are disappearing quickly at the present time. As the article discusses, this is a concern not just in terms of the loss of linguistic diversity, but also the loss of knowledge, e.g. of the natural environment, that was thoroughly embedded in each of these languages.
I’d simply note two things in terms of how these five hotspots reflect underlying global patterns. (These are likely obvious points for anyone who has thought much about culture globally, but worth remembering anyway.)
First, these instances don’t reflect just any random languages going extinct. Rather, they reflect particular sorts of interactional histories between quite different sorts of societies. Each is the end result of a few centuries interaction between societies (Native American, Siberian, Australian Aboriginal) with relatively low population densities and technologies that were less efficient for the specific purposes of armed conflict or intensive agricultural production (capable of supporting larger, dense populations) being faced with colonizers from much larger societies (European and Euro-American) with technologies that gave them a distinct edge in direct confrontation. (In the case of the Americas, especially, diseases brought along with Europeans were another major factor in the process of social disruption and linguistic disappearance.)
Second, the current hotspots of linguistic (and cultural) disappearance do not reflect a new phenomenon. They represent the tail end of a now centuries long process of social disruption, cultural loss, and cultural and linguistic assimilation. These hotspots represent remnant areas. What’s happening now in these areas already happened (often long ago) in other areas of the Americas with dense Euro-American settlement, in more densely populated Southern Australia, or in more westerly Siberian areas closer to the heartland of Russian culture.
Tragically, in all likelihood in the near future, very few Native American, Siberian, or Australian Aboriginal languages will remain. The ones that will remain will also not be random. They will in most cases be languages of cultural populations that had relatively high population numbers and densities prior to colonization (e.g. Mesoamerican or Andean languages and a few other North and South American languages), or populations settled in places where the effects of colonization have been particularly light on the ground.
I’d simply note two things in terms of how these five hotspots reflect underlying global patterns. (These are likely obvious points for anyone who has thought much about culture globally, but worth remembering anyway.)
First, these instances don’t reflect just any random languages going extinct. Rather, they reflect particular sorts of interactional histories between quite different sorts of societies. Each is the end result of a few centuries interaction between societies (Native American, Siberian, Australian Aboriginal) with relatively low population densities and technologies that were less efficient for the specific purposes of armed conflict or intensive agricultural production (capable of supporting larger, dense populations) being faced with colonizers from much larger societies (European and Euro-American) with technologies that gave them a distinct edge in direct confrontation. (In the case of the Americas, especially, diseases brought along with Europeans were another major factor in the process of social disruption and linguistic disappearance.)
Second, the current hotspots of linguistic (and cultural) disappearance do not reflect a new phenomenon. They represent the tail end of a now centuries long process of social disruption, cultural loss, and cultural and linguistic assimilation. These hotspots represent remnant areas. What’s happening now in these areas already happened (often long ago) in other areas of the Americas with dense Euro-American settlement, in more densely populated Southern Australia, or in more westerly Siberian areas closer to the heartland of Russian culture.
Tragically, in all likelihood in the near future, very few Native American, Siberian, or Australian Aboriginal languages will remain. The ones that will remain will also not be random. They will in most cases be languages of cultural populations that had relatively high population numbers and densities prior to colonization (e.g. Mesoamerican or Andean languages and a few other North and South American languages), or populations settled in places where the effects of colonization have been particularly light on the ground.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Cherokee Self-Determination and Cherokee Racism
Members of the Cherokee Nation recently (Saturday, March 3, 2007) voted to change the Cherokee Nation’s constitution to revoke membership from approximately 2800 descendants of slaves once owned by Cherokees. As Murray Evans of the Associated Press writes in an article in the online Indian Country Today for March 12, 2007, the Cherokee Supreme Court had affirmed in a 2006 ruling that an 1866 treaty had granted then recently freed slaves formerly owned by Cherokees and their descendants tribal citizenship. The recent election was a ballot initiative to change the Cherokee constitution to strip descendants of these “freedmen” of this citizenship and restrict membership in the tribe to individuals with traceable descent to the tribe “by blood.”
Cherokee Principal Chief Chad Smith presents the vote as purely an example of tribal self-determination. He is quoted by Evans, “The Cherokee people exercised the most basic democratic right, the right to vote. Their voice is clear as to who should be citizens of the Cherokee Nation. No one else has the right to make that determination.” (Frankly their voice is not clear. Smith presents the turnout of over 8700 voters, more than in most Cherokee elections, as a high turnout related to the importance of identity. He’s likely right that the importance of this particular issue in questions of core identity drove a higher voter turnout than normal; at the same time, the turnout can be viewed quite differently in terms of the clarity of the results. As Ben Fenwick of Reuters news service reported on March 6, 2007, “The tribe has about 250,000 people, but only 8,500 cast ballots in Saturday’s vote.”) Smith is also right that the vote is about self determination, but it is certainly not just about self determination. Voters could have equally determined to not kick out the descendants of Cherokee slaves.
There are at least two issues at play in voters’ decisions – one is the importance of being able to assert self determination and autonomy, but second is economics. Self determination and autonomy are touchy issues for many Native Americans, and for good reason. For the past couple centuries, the ability of most Native Americans to autonomously determine their own destinies has been highly circumscribed when not eliminated all together. Today, when Native American groups are occasionally able to take proactive steps to place their communities on stronger economic or political footing, there is usually resistance – witness the controversy that tends to arise any time a particular group attempts to open a tribal casino, or the current controversy surrounding the opening of the Grand Canyon Skywalk by the Hualapai (see my post below from March 8). Quite often, real autonomy and self determination for Native American communities is restricted to actions of a partly symbolic gesture that have little or no effect on North American society generally (for example, the Umatilla tribe’s persistence in trying to retain the remains of “Kennewick Man” despite any even remote empirical connection to their tribe [though there is logic to their claim – since they claim that they have always lived where they live now, and that before Euro-Americans arrived only they had lived there, Kennewick Man can’t be anything other than Umatilla], or the Makah tribe’s attempts to engage in whaling as an expression of cultural heritage). Because self determination if usually so circumscribed, and because even in the case of symbolic gestures they are often resisted by the non-Native public, the ability to assert self determination in these limited circumstances becomes more important. Though this can’t be proven, I suspect that the vociferousness of the Umatilla in their claims for Kennewick Man or the Cherokee in revising their tribal membership would be altered or moderated if they had greater overall political and economic autonomy and self determination.
Money is also important here. Casinos are one way in which some Native American groups have been able to improve the economic position of their communities in recent years and assert greater autonomy. Problems can accompany casinos as well, though, and one common problem that arises is infighting over who gets to share in the spoils of gambling profits. Although this issue is strangely absent from much reporting I’ve seen on the Cherokee vote, Fenwick writes, “Exclusion from the tribe means the black Cherokees cannot vote in tribal elections or receive entitlements such as health benefits or a share of casino revenues on tribal lands.” There’s the rub. One thing people were voting to do when they voted to exclude Black Cherokees was voting to increase their own shares of casino revenues. This doesn’t seem to have been the only, or even necessarily the main issue, or it would seem that more news reports should have picked up on this dynamic, but at the same time, I find it hard to imagine the sustained effort of the ballot initiative (and the 77 percent vote in favor of excluding Black Cherokees) without this economic component.
It’s clear that Cherokees should have the same basic human right to self determination and autonomy as anyone else. It’s not clear that voting to exclude individuals who help to constitute the polity is constitutionally legitimate. The vote is highly disappointing in that it smacks of racism and it denies the very self determination to Black Cherokees that Principal Chief Smith so strongly asserts for Cherokees in general.
Cherokee Principal Chief Chad Smith presents the vote as purely an example of tribal self-determination. He is quoted by Evans, “The Cherokee people exercised the most basic democratic right, the right to vote. Their voice is clear as to who should be citizens of the Cherokee Nation. No one else has the right to make that determination.” (Frankly their voice is not clear. Smith presents the turnout of over 8700 voters, more than in most Cherokee elections, as a high turnout related to the importance of identity. He’s likely right that the importance of this particular issue in questions of core identity drove a higher voter turnout than normal; at the same time, the turnout can be viewed quite differently in terms of the clarity of the results. As Ben Fenwick of Reuters news service reported on March 6, 2007, “The tribe has about 250,000 people, but only 8,500 cast ballots in Saturday’s vote.”) Smith is also right that the vote is about self determination, but it is certainly not just about self determination. Voters could have equally determined to not kick out the descendants of Cherokee slaves.
There are at least two issues at play in voters’ decisions – one is the importance of being able to assert self determination and autonomy, but second is economics. Self determination and autonomy are touchy issues for many Native Americans, and for good reason. For the past couple centuries, the ability of most Native Americans to autonomously determine their own destinies has been highly circumscribed when not eliminated all together. Today, when Native American groups are occasionally able to take proactive steps to place their communities on stronger economic or political footing, there is usually resistance – witness the controversy that tends to arise any time a particular group attempts to open a tribal casino, or the current controversy surrounding the opening of the Grand Canyon Skywalk by the Hualapai (see my post below from March 8). Quite often, real autonomy and self determination for Native American communities is restricted to actions of a partly symbolic gesture that have little or no effect on North American society generally (for example, the Umatilla tribe’s persistence in trying to retain the remains of “Kennewick Man” despite any even remote empirical connection to their tribe [though there is logic to their claim – since they claim that they have always lived where they live now, and that before Euro-Americans arrived only they had lived there, Kennewick Man can’t be anything other than Umatilla], or the Makah tribe’s attempts to engage in whaling as an expression of cultural heritage). Because self determination if usually so circumscribed, and because even in the case of symbolic gestures they are often resisted by the non-Native public, the ability to assert self determination in these limited circumstances becomes more important. Though this can’t be proven, I suspect that the vociferousness of the Umatilla in their claims for Kennewick Man or the Cherokee in revising their tribal membership would be altered or moderated if they had greater overall political and economic autonomy and self determination.
Money is also important here. Casinos are one way in which some Native American groups have been able to improve the economic position of their communities in recent years and assert greater autonomy. Problems can accompany casinos as well, though, and one common problem that arises is infighting over who gets to share in the spoils of gambling profits. Although this issue is strangely absent from much reporting I’ve seen on the Cherokee vote, Fenwick writes, “Exclusion from the tribe means the black Cherokees cannot vote in tribal elections or receive entitlements such as health benefits or a share of casino revenues on tribal lands.” There’s the rub. One thing people were voting to do when they voted to exclude Black Cherokees was voting to increase their own shares of casino revenues. This doesn’t seem to have been the only, or even necessarily the main issue, or it would seem that more news reports should have picked up on this dynamic, but at the same time, I find it hard to imagine the sustained effort of the ballot initiative (and the 77 percent vote in favor of excluding Black Cherokees) without this economic component.
It’s clear that Cherokees should have the same basic human right to self determination and autonomy as anyone else. It’s not clear that voting to exclude individuals who help to constitute the polity is constitutionally legitimate. The vote is highly disappointing in that it smacks of racism and it denies the very self determination to Black Cherokees that Principal Chief Smith so strongly asserts for Cherokees in general.
Thursday, March 8, 2007
The Grand Canyon Skywalk and Hualapai Self Determination
The Hualapai are a small Native American tribal group (less than 2000 people) living along a stretch of the South Rim of the Grand Canyon that until recently was largely inaccessible to Canyon tourists. The Hualapai reservation is also beset by poverty (with around 50% unemployment currently), as well as associated problems with alcoholism. As a recent article in the Los Angeles Times by Julie Cart makes clear, the Hualapi aim to remedy their situation, and open this portion of the Canyon to tourists, in dramatic fashion via the Grand Canyon Skywalk.
The Skywalk, slated to open at the end of March, is a potentially vertigo inducing horseshoe shaped walkway with floor and side walls made of 4 inch think glass that will jut out 70 feet over the canyon’s rim, allowing a bird’s eye view of an over 3,000 feet vertical drop below the pathway.
The Skywalk has also generated controversy. Cart quotes Robert Arnberger, former superintendent of Grand Canyon National Park, “It’s the equivalent of an upscale carnival ride.” And “Why would they desecrate this place with this?” Kieran Suckling of the Arizona based Center for Biological Diversity is quoted, “What the Grand Canyon needs most is a place for quiet contemplation and recreation. The Skywalk is part of a process that is turning the canyon into a tacky commercial playground.”
It’s hard to know exactly what the Skywalk will look like until it is actually in place, but from all the artist’s renditions and plans, it’s actually an elegant looking structure, and one likely to offer visitors a unique vantage on the Canyon, and perhaps a new appreciation as well. The Grand Canyon is such a special place that it’s right to worry about its being turned into a tacky tourist trap or being desecrated, but it’s hard to see how the Skywalk as it is designed would constitute such desecration. At the very least, and as the tribe points out, their Skywalk (at least as currently envisioned) represents a less obtrusive presence at the Canyon’s rim than the much larger scale economic development at the main National Park site, with its 4.5 million visitors per year.
More importantly, if anyone has a right to determine and pursue their own economic interests at the Grand Canyon, it is the Hualapai, the people whose ancestors have lived there for centuries. Arnberger, Suckling, and others don’t have to like this, but at least at the moment, it does seem that in this instance they will have to deal with it. Arnberger at least seems to recognize this: He’s also quoted as saying, “They [the Hualapai] say the Grand Canyon is theirs to do with however they please. Under law, it’s hard to argue that proposition. But obviously the lure of dollars for the tribal treasury is greater than the obligation to manage the Grand Canyon for its cultural and historic values.”
It’s hard to see, though, how the Skywalk, if it represents a “desecration” (which at this point I don’t see), is more a desecration of the Canyon than any of the other development that doesn’t directly benefit a Native American community. The fact that a Native American community would recognize a need for their own economic development (again – 50% unemployment and problems with alcoholism) and do something about it for themselves is here turned against them. The attempt to determine their own destiny in an entrepreneurial fashion (which would seem like living the American Dream in most other contexts) is here presented as failing to manage cultural and historic values and greedy money grubbing.
The land they’re developing is theirs to do with as they please. The Hualapai have chosen an elegant design for this project which will enhance the experience of the canyon for many visitors. (This doesn’t preclude adding on all sorts of tacky tourist trap stuff, and if they do, I won’t like it, but I’ll also just have to deal with it.) Finally, the Hualapai have recognized their own economic needs, and with the Grand Canyon Skywalk, they’re taking positive steps to try to meet those needs for themselves – something that normally is applauded in America. In short, this a controversy where there shouldn’t be one.
The Skywalk, slated to open at the end of March, is a potentially vertigo inducing horseshoe shaped walkway with floor and side walls made of 4 inch think glass that will jut out 70 feet over the canyon’s rim, allowing a bird’s eye view of an over 3,000 feet vertical drop below the pathway.
The Skywalk has also generated controversy. Cart quotes Robert Arnberger, former superintendent of Grand Canyon National Park, “It’s the equivalent of an upscale carnival ride.” And “Why would they desecrate this place with this?” Kieran Suckling of the Arizona based Center for Biological Diversity is quoted, “What the Grand Canyon needs most is a place for quiet contemplation and recreation. The Skywalk is part of a process that is turning the canyon into a tacky commercial playground.”
It’s hard to know exactly what the Skywalk will look like until it is actually in place, but from all the artist’s renditions and plans, it’s actually an elegant looking structure, and one likely to offer visitors a unique vantage on the Canyon, and perhaps a new appreciation as well. The Grand Canyon is such a special place that it’s right to worry about its being turned into a tacky tourist trap or being desecrated, but it’s hard to see how the Skywalk as it is designed would constitute such desecration. At the very least, and as the tribe points out, their Skywalk (at least as currently envisioned) represents a less obtrusive presence at the Canyon’s rim than the much larger scale economic development at the main National Park site, with its 4.5 million visitors per year.
More importantly, if anyone has a right to determine and pursue their own economic interests at the Grand Canyon, it is the Hualapai, the people whose ancestors have lived there for centuries. Arnberger, Suckling, and others don’t have to like this, but at least at the moment, it does seem that in this instance they will have to deal with it. Arnberger at least seems to recognize this: He’s also quoted as saying, “They [the Hualapai] say the Grand Canyon is theirs to do with however they please. Under law, it’s hard to argue that proposition. But obviously the lure of dollars for the tribal treasury is greater than the obligation to manage the Grand Canyon for its cultural and historic values.”
It’s hard to see, though, how the Skywalk, if it represents a “desecration” (which at this point I don’t see), is more a desecration of the Canyon than any of the other development that doesn’t directly benefit a Native American community. The fact that a Native American community would recognize a need for their own economic development (again – 50% unemployment and problems with alcoholism) and do something about it for themselves is here turned against them. The attempt to determine their own destiny in an entrepreneurial fashion (which would seem like living the American Dream in most other contexts) is here presented as failing to manage cultural and historic values and greedy money grubbing.
The land they’re developing is theirs to do with as they please. The Hualapai have chosen an elegant design for this project which will enhance the experience of the canyon for many visitors. (This doesn’t preclude adding on all sorts of tacky tourist trap stuff, and if they do, I won’t like it, but I’ll also just have to deal with it.) Finally, the Hualapai have recognized their own economic needs, and with the Grand Canyon Skywalk, they’re taking positive steps to try to meet those needs for themselves – something that normally is applauded in America. In short, this a controversy where there shouldn’t be one.
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
A Typology of Genocide
I am prompted to consider whether there are different types of genocides by three things: (1) having recently read Jean Hatzfeld’s book Machete Season; (2) a recent class discussion in a course I am currently teaching on Native North American cultures; and (3) the continued dithering and lack of action on the part of the U.N. with regard to the ethnic violence and massacres in the Darfur region of Sudan and now also neighboring portions of Chad and the Central African Republic.
(1) Hatzfeld’s book Machete Season is a harrowing read, based as it is on interviews with Hutu killers who participated directly in the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda in the mid 1990s. Hatzfeld had previously conducted interviews and written about Tutsi survivors of that genocide. He also has written about instances of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. In Machete Season He makes a distinction between genocide and ethnic cleansing. He also carefully makes clear that labeling the events in Bosnia “ethnic cleansing” rather than “genocide” is in no way intended to diminish the significance of the abuse heaped upon specific individuals and communities. Rather it is to recognize a difference in the way that events played out in Bosnia and Rwanda, as well as a difference in the motivations and coordination of the killers.
One key difference between the two cases concerns who was killed. In Bosnia, ethnic cleansing involved the removal of Bosniak Muslims from Serb dominated areas, including large scale massacres at some sites, such as Srebrenica. Such massacres focused on men. Men and older boys were killed wholesale, while women and children, when killed, were killed more randomly. Rape was perpetrated commonly, but not necessarily systematically, on Bosniak women (which doesn’t at all minimize its effects or horror, but simply describes the practice). Hatzfeld argues that the intent (and the result in some areas) was to drive out the Bosniaks, to brutalize them, to diminish their capability to retaliate, but did stop short of attempting to completely eliminate the Bosniaks as a group. It is this that prompts Hatzfeld to say this was something subtly different from genocide.
In the Rwandan case, the evidence from the Tutsi survivors, Hutu killers, and material remains makes clear that Tutsis, regardless of gender or age, were massacred wholesale. The goal was not to drive them out but to completely eliminate them.
(2) In a recent class discussion in my current course on Native North American cultures, where the specific discussion focused on effects of European and Euro-American interactions with Native Americans, the issue arose whether there had been a Native American genocide. After careful discussion, a number of conclusions were reached. First, the consensus of the class was that whether there was genocide in this case depended on whether we define it in terms of the sorts of effects that result from an interaction or in terms of the motivations influencing the actions of one side.
If genocide is defined in terms of effects (a legitimate starting point, though not the route I would choose, because it entails only ever being able to identify genocide after the fact, after the results are in), then there clearly was a Native American genocide. In terms of absolute numbers and population proportions, the consequences of European-Native American interaction were more deadly for Native Americans than was the case for any of the 20th – 21st century genocides, due to a combination of disease, violence, and enslavement.
The consensus of the class (with some respectful and respected dissenters) was that genocide should be defined more on the basis of motivations of those doing the killing. When so defined, in most cases we see something slightly different from genocide and more like ethnic cleansing in the Native American case. There were many massacres of Native American populations, just as in Bosnia, but rarely were they systematic in intent or practice, i.e. rarely were they systematic attempts to wipe out a whole group. There seems overall (despite the more clearly genocidal intent of some individuals, like General Sherman who tried to adapt the total war techniques he had pioneered during the Civil War to genocidal endeavors in the American West) to have been an attempt to move Native Americans away (e.g. the Trail of Tears and the whole reservation system) and later to assimilate them forcefully through institutions like Indian Boarding Schools. To use a current technical anthropological term, there was systematic “ethnocide” in European-Native American interactions, and there was frequent and often extreme violence (there was perhaps even genocide in specific cases), but taken overall, something a little different than genocide occurred (and as in the Bosnian ethnic cleansing case, saying genocide didn’t occur doesn’t make it better, but simply describes the situation). (If we shift our historical gaze south of the United States, in most of Latin America, there was not even an attempt to move Native Americans out of the way [except in parts of Argentina and Chile] – not because of a particularly nobler attitude towards Native Americans, but because the Spanish and Portuguese wanted to use their labor.)
(3) Some senior U.S. administration officials have labeled the events on the ground in Darfur and surrounding regions genocide, but to date the U.N. has refrained from doing so. This is partly no doubt out of cynical self interest on the part of some countries, such as China, with an interest in cultivating economic and political ties with the Sudanese government, partly reluctance to use that term, because under the U.N.’s charter, “genocide” would require strong action, but also arguably because some don’t quite see the events as genocide. I would label these events genocide, but I would also recognize that events in Darfur (and for that matter the events of the early 20th century Armenian genocide) are a bit different than those of the Holocaust or the Rwandan genocide.
Therefore, I would propose the following categories for considering genocide and related practice: state sponsored and coordinated genocide, state promoted – locally coordinated genocide, and ethnic cleansing.
State Sponsored and Coordinated Genocide
This is the sort of instance many have in mind when they think of “genocide,” and as I argued above may be part of the reason that some at the U.N. are uncomfortable labeling the Darfur situation a genocide (because it doesn’t – at least not systematically – fit into this type of genocide, and also as I said above, many states have other, less legitimate reasons, to resist the labeling of genocide).
The two most prominent examples of states sponsored and coordinated genocide are the Jewish Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide. There are some important differences between these two cases (which will always be the case with any two distinct members of any sort of type or category): the Holocaust was administered largely through gassings and machine guns, the Rwandan genocide largely through machetes (through there was plenty of machine gunning in Rwanda, and plenty of stabbing and slashing in the Holocaust); while Jews in Germany and Tutsis in Rwanda were both minority ethnic groups, Jews in Germany were largely unknown at a personal level to many Germans, whereas most every Rwandan Hutu was on familiar terms with at least a handful of local Tutsis (which meant that the Rwandan genocide was more intimate; the Holocaust in places like Poland and Lithuania often took on a similar quality); the Holocaust in Germany (but not in places like Poland or the Baltic states) had an urban character, as German Jews were almost exclusively an urban ethnic minority there, while all of Rwandan society has a rural character (as Hatzfeld describes, even Kigali, which is a large city, has the character of many, many rural communities juxtaposed next to one another), with Tutsis despised by many Hutus because of their association of Tutsis with cattle breeding and greater wealth. So, to place the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide in the same category is not to suggest they are the same through and through.
They do have important similarities, though. Most importantly, they were both strongly associated with the state apparatus in their implementation. The state promoted overtly the mass killing of a particular ethnic minority. (This was more clearly the case in Rwanda, but there was plenty of explicit promotion of killing Jews in public statements by Hitler and others, including quite obviously in Mein Kampf.) Further, the genocides were centrally coordinated by the state. This was perhaps more elaborate (and well known) for the Holocaust, but also occurred through the use of radio communication for coordination and the use of the interahamwe militia to implement genocide at the local level (as is made clear in Hatzfeld’s book) in the Rwandan case. This isn’t to suggest that there wasn’t also plenty of local initiative taken to participate in the two genocides in ways not directly promoted and coordinated by the state – there’s plenty of evidence in both cases of things like Hutu villagers seeking out their former neighbors in hiding to kill them, even when not directly coerced to do so by the interahamwe, or Polish or Lithuanian peasants helping German units track local Jewish residents, sometimes even participating directly in the mass killings, or German soldiers volunteering to participate in military units, such as the einsatzgruppen, designed to do nothing more than track down and kill Jews. The overall quality of these two genocides, though, is of a state apparatus being channeled toward attempting to efficiently and systematically wipe out a particular ethnic group (really ethnic and other social groups in the case of the Holocaust, since vast numbers of Roma and a much smaller, but proportionally large, number of homosexuals were also targeted and killed).
The fact that the state was so intimately involved in these two instances makes them quite unusual. Really the only other such example I can readily think of is the German attempt to wipe out the Herero people in the German colony of Southwestern Africa (now Namibia) in the early 20th century. Several historians have discussed this episode as a sort of warm up for the Holocaust, which among other things pioneered the concentration camp as a tool in mass murder and genocide (the Germans probably borrowed the idea of the concentration camp from the British use of such camps in South Africa during the Boer War, and the earliest instance of the modern concentration camp was probably the Confederate prison at Andersonville, Georgia which housed Union prisoners of war during the American Civil War, but the camps housing Herero inmates were the first channeled to genocidal purposes).
State Promoted – Locally Coordinated Genocide
Both the current massacres in Darfur and the Armenian genocide in the early 20th century represent definite genocides. In both cases there is or was a definite attempt to wipe out particular ethnic groups, Armenians in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire or the Fur and related black, non-Arab ethnic groups in Darfur, Sudan. The character of these genocides is different from that of the Holocaust or Rwanda, though. For the most part, the state is or was not the primary direct perpetrator but played mainly the role of instigator (exceptions include things like Sudanese military planes attacking communities in Darfur under the guise of attacking rebels). The Sudanese state is not completely lying when it claims to not be engaged in massacres – it is mainly the janjaweed militias who commit the atrocities, but there’s plenty of evidence to indicate state support (material and ideological) of the janjaweed. The Turkish state is not completely lying when it claims things like, “It was the Kurds who killed the Armenians” – in many cases, Kurds were involved in killing Armenians, but so were lots more Turks.
It’s important to recognize differences in organization and implementation of genocides because these differences require different responses. If the world at large through the U.N. were to ever decide to take action in Darfur before it’s too late to bother (something about which I’m quite skeptical and pessimistic, but also hopeful), the strategies and tactics called for would be different than if the world at large through the U.N. had ever gotten around to deciding to take action in Rwanda. In Rwanda, the military defeat of the Hutu-dominated army and government (and by the end of the genocide simply the Hutu army and government) by Tutsi rebels essentially ended the genocide. There had been some local initiative and coordination of specific maneuvers during the genocide, but these had been minor in scope and fell apart almost instantaneously with the defeat of the state. It’s not at all clear that the same would apply to Darfur. The fact that the state is involved, but mainly indirectly, means that things like sanctions or warfare against the Sudanese state might or might not be sufficient to end the genocide. With the first sort of genocide described above, the international response that would be appropriate is clear (even if the international community has never responded in this way) – end the state that is directly perpetrating genocide and you end the genocide. With this second type of more diffuse and localized genocide, while I would argue that it is still necessary to intervene powerfully in some way with the state in question, it’s not so clear that this would even be close to sufficient in order to end these types of genocide (in fact, the Armenian genocide continued well past the 1915 date normally associated with the genocide, even as the Ottoman state was crumbling at the end of World War I). If anything, a response involving very strong economic and political sanctions seems more likely to be effective than military action with this sort of genocide. Strong sanctions would give the Sudanese government at least some incentive to use the direct and indirect influence on the janjaweed to stop the killings; toppling the Sudanese government would more likely lead to a chaotic situation where no one would have much influence of the janjaweed.
Ethnic Cleansing
I would apply the term “ethnic cleansing” for situations that have strong analogous qualities to the context of the term's original use, Bosnia. That is, ethnic cleansing refers to situations which are not genocide because they do not involve the systematic attempt to eliminate an ethnic group altogether but which do involve a systematic attempt to remove an ethnic group from a particular context or area. This may involve ethnocide (the attempt the eliminate an ethnicity [as opposed to the people who comprise the ethnic group] through forced assimilation), such as with Indian boarding schools; it may involve large massacres, as in both the Bosnian and Native American contexts; it may involve targeted killings of members of a particular ethnic group, as in the sectarian violence in Iraq, the current situation that comes closest to fitting into the category of ethnic cleansing, though to be technical, the Iraqi situation would be more “sectarian cleansing;” but in each of these cases, this is not genocide. For the individuals killed or otherwise directly affected, ethnic cleansing is no less tragic or devastating than either type of genocide, so saying that ethnic cleansing is not genocide is not at all to suggest it is a less serious crime and horror, but to say that it is simply a slightly different kind of crime and horror, involving different motivations and strategies.
As with genocide, a further distinction could be made between ethnic cleansing that is both instigated and coordinated by a state apparatus and that which is locally coordinated and not centrally controlled. The Native North American case is obviously not a single case, but many contexts over a period of centuries. The Trail of Tears and many other instances of Indian Removal were state instigated and implemented. Many, perhaps most, massacres of Native Americans were locally initiated, sometimes with the state having helped to foster a situation of violence or acquiescing to violence, and sometimes not.
Other Mass Violence
Genocide and ethnic cleansing are not the only types of mass violence. Warfare in general involves mass violence, but it generally doesn’t involve the targeting of specific social groups beyond enemy militaries. The 20th century development of total war (which was being experimented with at least as early as the American Civil War), especially during World War II, brought troubling changes to this, as most of the major powers involved in that war engaged in military tactics which didn’t just kill large numbers of civilians collaterally but specifically targeted them as a way of undermining the total society. In most cases, while egregiously violating standards of human rights later formalized, these actions could not be easily regarded as genocide, ethnic cleansing, or even particularly motivated by ethnicity, but in a few cases, ethnicity does seem to have played a role. This seems to be the case in the Japanese atrocities in Nanjing, and I have found greatly troubling the U.S. fire bombing of every Japanese city and most every Japanese town (as well as the fact that far more attention has been paid to the fire bombing of a much smaller number of German communities and cities – which was horrific in its own right – but which entailed far fewer total German than Japanese deaths).
Other instances of mass violence don’t really fit in the discussion of ethnic violence of any sort because clearly not ethnically motivated, but do have some analogous qualities in terms of their implementation and the fact that they involve systematic killings and violence directed at specific selected social groups or individuals. For example, the Stalinist purges and gulag system or the “Killing Fields” of Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, while not genocide, involved mass internments and killings instigated and coordinated directly by the state apparatus and have some analogous qualities to the Holocaust or the Rwandan genocide.
Why Distinguish between Different sorts of Mass Violence?
First, making accurate distinctions gives you a greater ability to make subtle arguments, and to avoid exaggeration or mischaracterization. When Amnesty International referred to Guantanamo as an “American Gulag,” they engaged in serious exaggeration which undermined the credibility of their own research and reporting. You don’t need to call it the “Gulag” in order to take accusations of impropriety at Guantanamo seriously. When I heard someone refer to Israeli military actions in Lebanon in the summer of 2006 as “genocide,” I couldn’t take seriously anything else she had to say about the matter. It’s not that I didn’t find any of Israel’s military actions troubling, but there was nothing particularly “genocidal” about Israeli actions.
Second, distinguishing between different sorts of practice can be pragmatically important. Since not all genocides or examples of mass ethnic violence work the same way, we don’t fully understand them if we don’t make such distinctions. While no genocide or ethnic cleansing will ever be easy to respond to – either in understanding what an appropriate response would be or in implementing that response, and while no amount of understanding will alone provide the political will necessary to appropriately respond, lack of full understanding will almost certainly doom any response, no matter how well intentioned, to failure.
(1) Hatzfeld’s book Machete Season is a harrowing read, based as it is on interviews with Hutu killers who participated directly in the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda in the mid 1990s. Hatzfeld had previously conducted interviews and written about Tutsi survivors of that genocide. He also has written about instances of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. In Machete Season He makes a distinction between genocide and ethnic cleansing. He also carefully makes clear that labeling the events in Bosnia “ethnic cleansing” rather than “genocide” is in no way intended to diminish the significance of the abuse heaped upon specific individuals and communities. Rather it is to recognize a difference in the way that events played out in Bosnia and Rwanda, as well as a difference in the motivations and coordination of the killers.
One key difference between the two cases concerns who was killed. In Bosnia, ethnic cleansing involved the removal of Bosniak Muslims from Serb dominated areas, including large scale massacres at some sites, such as Srebrenica. Such massacres focused on men. Men and older boys were killed wholesale, while women and children, when killed, were killed more randomly. Rape was perpetrated commonly, but not necessarily systematically, on Bosniak women (which doesn’t at all minimize its effects or horror, but simply describes the practice). Hatzfeld argues that the intent (and the result in some areas) was to drive out the Bosniaks, to brutalize them, to diminish their capability to retaliate, but did stop short of attempting to completely eliminate the Bosniaks as a group. It is this that prompts Hatzfeld to say this was something subtly different from genocide.
In the Rwandan case, the evidence from the Tutsi survivors, Hutu killers, and material remains makes clear that Tutsis, regardless of gender or age, were massacred wholesale. The goal was not to drive them out but to completely eliminate them.
(2) In a recent class discussion in my current course on Native North American cultures, where the specific discussion focused on effects of European and Euro-American interactions with Native Americans, the issue arose whether there had been a Native American genocide. After careful discussion, a number of conclusions were reached. First, the consensus of the class was that whether there was genocide in this case depended on whether we define it in terms of the sorts of effects that result from an interaction or in terms of the motivations influencing the actions of one side.
If genocide is defined in terms of effects (a legitimate starting point, though not the route I would choose, because it entails only ever being able to identify genocide after the fact, after the results are in), then there clearly was a Native American genocide. In terms of absolute numbers and population proportions, the consequences of European-Native American interaction were more deadly for Native Americans than was the case for any of the 20th – 21st century genocides, due to a combination of disease, violence, and enslavement.
The consensus of the class (with some respectful and respected dissenters) was that genocide should be defined more on the basis of motivations of those doing the killing. When so defined, in most cases we see something slightly different from genocide and more like ethnic cleansing in the Native American case. There were many massacres of Native American populations, just as in Bosnia, but rarely were they systematic in intent or practice, i.e. rarely were they systematic attempts to wipe out a whole group. There seems overall (despite the more clearly genocidal intent of some individuals, like General Sherman who tried to adapt the total war techniques he had pioneered during the Civil War to genocidal endeavors in the American West) to have been an attempt to move Native Americans away (e.g. the Trail of Tears and the whole reservation system) and later to assimilate them forcefully through institutions like Indian Boarding Schools. To use a current technical anthropological term, there was systematic “ethnocide” in European-Native American interactions, and there was frequent and often extreme violence (there was perhaps even genocide in specific cases), but taken overall, something a little different than genocide occurred (and as in the Bosnian ethnic cleansing case, saying genocide didn’t occur doesn’t make it better, but simply describes the situation). (If we shift our historical gaze south of the United States, in most of Latin America, there was not even an attempt to move Native Americans out of the way [except in parts of Argentina and Chile] – not because of a particularly nobler attitude towards Native Americans, but because the Spanish and Portuguese wanted to use their labor.)
(3) Some senior U.S. administration officials have labeled the events on the ground in Darfur and surrounding regions genocide, but to date the U.N. has refrained from doing so. This is partly no doubt out of cynical self interest on the part of some countries, such as China, with an interest in cultivating economic and political ties with the Sudanese government, partly reluctance to use that term, because under the U.N.’s charter, “genocide” would require strong action, but also arguably because some don’t quite see the events as genocide. I would label these events genocide, but I would also recognize that events in Darfur (and for that matter the events of the early 20th century Armenian genocide) are a bit different than those of the Holocaust or the Rwandan genocide.
Therefore, I would propose the following categories for considering genocide and related practice: state sponsored and coordinated genocide, state promoted – locally coordinated genocide, and ethnic cleansing.
State Sponsored and Coordinated Genocide
This is the sort of instance many have in mind when they think of “genocide,” and as I argued above may be part of the reason that some at the U.N. are uncomfortable labeling the Darfur situation a genocide (because it doesn’t – at least not systematically – fit into this type of genocide, and also as I said above, many states have other, less legitimate reasons, to resist the labeling of genocide).
The two most prominent examples of states sponsored and coordinated genocide are the Jewish Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide. There are some important differences between these two cases (which will always be the case with any two distinct members of any sort of type or category): the Holocaust was administered largely through gassings and machine guns, the Rwandan genocide largely through machetes (through there was plenty of machine gunning in Rwanda, and plenty of stabbing and slashing in the Holocaust); while Jews in Germany and Tutsis in Rwanda were both minority ethnic groups, Jews in Germany were largely unknown at a personal level to many Germans, whereas most every Rwandan Hutu was on familiar terms with at least a handful of local Tutsis (which meant that the Rwandan genocide was more intimate; the Holocaust in places like Poland and Lithuania often took on a similar quality); the Holocaust in Germany (but not in places like Poland or the Baltic states) had an urban character, as German Jews were almost exclusively an urban ethnic minority there, while all of Rwandan society has a rural character (as Hatzfeld describes, even Kigali, which is a large city, has the character of many, many rural communities juxtaposed next to one another), with Tutsis despised by many Hutus because of their association of Tutsis with cattle breeding and greater wealth. So, to place the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide in the same category is not to suggest they are the same through and through.
They do have important similarities, though. Most importantly, they were both strongly associated with the state apparatus in their implementation. The state promoted overtly the mass killing of a particular ethnic minority. (This was more clearly the case in Rwanda, but there was plenty of explicit promotion of killing Jews in public statements by Hitler and others, including quite obviously in Mein Kampf.) Further, the genocides were centrally coordinated by the state. This was perhaps more elaborate (and well known) for the Holocaust, but also occurred through the use of radio communication for coordination and the use of the interahamwe militia to implement genocide at the local level (as is made clear in Hatzfeld’s book) in the Rwandan case. This isn’t to suggest that there wasn’t also plenty of local initiative taken to participate in the two genocides in ways not directly promoted and coordinated by the state – there’s plenty of evidence in both cases of things like Hutu villagers seeking out their former neighbors in hiding to kill them, even when not directly coerced to do so by the interahamwe, or Polish or Lithuanian peasants helping German units track local Jewish residents, sometimes even participating directly in the mass killings, or German soldiers volunteering to participate in military units, such as the einsatzgruppen, designed to do nothing more than track down and kill Jews. The overall quality of these two genocides, though, is of a state apparatus being channeled toward attempting to efficiently and systematically wipe out a particular ethnic group (really ethnic and other social groups in the case of the Holocaust, since vast numbers of Roma and a much smaller, but proportionally large, number of homosexuals were also targeted and killed).
The fact that the state was so intimately involved in these two instances makes them quite unusual. Really the only other such example I can readily think of is the German attempt to wipe out the Herero people in the German colony of Southwestern Africa (now Namibia) in the early 20th century. Several historians have discussed this episode as a sort of warm up for the Holocaust, which among other things pioneered the concentration camp as a tool in mass murder and genocide (the Germans probably borrowed the idea of the concentration camp from the British use of such camps in South Africa during the Boer War, and the earliest instance of the modern concentration camp was probably the Confederate prison at Andersonville, Georgia which housed Union prisoners of war during the American Civil War, but the camps housing Herero inmates were the first channeled to genocidal purposes).
State Promoted – Locally Coordinated Genocide
Both the current massacres in Darfur and the Armenian genocide in the early 20th century represent definite genocides. In both cases there is or was a definite attempt to wipe out particular ethnic groups, Armenians in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire or the Fur and related black, non-Arab ethnic groups in Darfur, Sudan. The character of these genocides is different from that of the Holocaust or Rwanda, though. For the most part, the state is or was not the primary direct perpetrator but played mainly the role of instigator (exceptions include things like Sudanese military planes attacking communities in Darfur under the guise of attacking rebels). The Sudanese state is not completely lying when it claims to not be engaged in massacres – it is mainly the janjaweed militias who commit the atrocities, but there’s plenty of evidence to indicate state support (material and ideological) of the janjaweed. The Turkish state is not completely lying when it claims things like, “It was the Kurds who killed the Armenians” – in many cases, Kurds were involved in killing Armenians, but so were lots more Turks.
It’s important to recognize differences in organization and implementation of genocides because these differences require different responses. If the world at large through the U.N. were to ever decide to take action in Darfur before it’s too late to bother (something about which I’m quite skeptical and pessimistic, but also hopeful), the strategies and tactics called for would be different than if the world at large through the U.N. had ever gotten around to deciding to take action in Rwanda. In Rwanda, the military defeat of the Hutu-dominated army and government (and by the end of the genocide simply the Hutu army and government) by Tutsi rebels essentially ended the genocide. There had been some local initiative and coordination of specific maneuvers during the genocide, but these had been minor in scope and fell apart almost instantaneously with the defeat of the state. It’s not at all clear that the same would apply to Darfur. The fact that the state is involved, but mainly indirectly, means that things like sanctions or warfare against the Sudanese state might or might not be sufficient to end the genocide. With the first sort of genocide described above, the international response that would be appropriate is clear (even if the international community has never responded in this way) – end the state that is directly perpetrating genocide and you end the genocide. With this second type of more diffuse and localized genocide, while I would argue that it is still necessary to intervene powerfully in some way with the state in question, it’s not so clear that this would even be close to sufficient in order to end these types of genocide (in fact, the Armenian genocide continued well past the 1915 date normally associated with the genocide, even as the Ottoman state was crumbling at the end of World War I). If anything, a response involving very strong economic and political sanctions seems more likely to be effective than military action with this sort of genocide. Strong sanctions would give the Sudanese government at least some incentive to use the direct and indirect influence on the janjaweed to stop the killings; toppling the Sudanese government would more likely lead to a chaotic situation where no one would have much influence of the janjaweed.
Ethnic Cleansing
I would apply the term “ethnic cleansing” for situations that have strong analogous qualities to the context of the term's original use, Bosnia. That is, ethnic cleansing refers to situations which are not genocide because they do not involve the systematic attempt to eliminate an ethnic group altogether but which do involve a systematic attempt to remove an ethnic group from a particular context or area. This may involve ethnocide (the attempt the eliminate an ethnicity [as opposed to the people who comprise the ethnic group] through forced assimilation), such as with Indian boarding schools; it may involve large massacres, as in both the Bosnian and Native American contexts; it may involve targeted killings of members of a particular ethnic group, as in the sectarian violence in Iraq, the current situation that comes closest to fitting into the category of ethnic cleansing, though to be technical, the Iraqi situation would be more “sectarian cleansing;” but in each of these cases, this is not genocide. For the individuals killed or otherwise directly affected, ethnic cleansing is no less tragic or devastating than either type of genocide, so saying that ethnic cleansing is not genocide is not at all to suggest it is a less serious crime and horror, but to say that it is simply a slightly different kind of crime and horror, involving different motivations and strategies.
As with genocide, a further distinction could be made between ethnic cleansing that is both instigated and coordinated by a state apparatus and that which is locally coordinated and not centrally controlled. The Native North American case is obviously not a single case, but many contexts over a period of centuries. The Trail of Tears and many other instances of Indian Removal were state instigated and implemented. Many, perhaps most, massacres of Native Americans were locally initiated, sometimes with the state having helped to foster a situation of violence or acquiescing to violence, and sometimes not.
Other Mass Violence
Genocide and ethnic cleansing are not the only types of mass violence. Warfare in general involves mass violence, but it generally doesn’t involve the targeting of specific social groups beyond enemy militaries. The 20th century development of total war (which was being experimented with at least as early as the American Civil War), especially during World War II, brought troubling changes to this, as most of the major powers involved in that war engaged in military tactics which didn’t just kill large numbers of civilians collaterally but specifically targeted them as a way of undermining the total society. In most cases, while egregiously violating standards of human rights later formalized, these actions could not be easily regarded as genocide, ethnic cleansing, or even particularly motivated by ethnicity, but in a few cases, ethnicity does seem to have played a role. This seems to be the case in the Japanese atrocities in Nanjing, and I have found greatly troubling the U.S. fire bombing of every Japanese city and most every Japanese town (as well as the fact that far more attention has been paid to the fire bombing of a much smaller number of German communities and cities – which was horrific in its own right – but which entailed far fewer total German than Japanese deaths).
Other instances of mass violence don’t really fit in the discussion of ethnic violence of any sort because clearly not ethnically motivated, but do have some analogous qualities in terms of their implementation and the fact that they involve systematic killings and violence directed at specific selected social groups or individuals. For example, the Stalinist purges and gulag system or the “Killing Fields” of Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, while not genocide, involved mass internments and killings instigated and coordinated directly by the state apparatus and have some analogous qualities to the Holocaust or the Rwandan genocide.
Why Distinguish between Different sorts of Mass Violence?
First, making accurate distinctions gives you a greater ability to make subtle arguments, and to avoid exaggeration or mischaracterization. When Amnesty International referred to Guantanamo as an “American Gulag,” they engaged in serious exaggeration which undermined the credibility of their own research and reporting. You don’t need to call it the “Gulag” in order to take accusations of impropriety at Guantanamo seriously. When I heard someone refer to Israeli military actions in Lebanon in the summer of 2006 as “genocide,” I couldn’t take seriously anything else she had to say about the matter. It’s not that I didn’t find any of Israel’s military actions troubling, but there was nothing particularly “genocidal” about Israeli actions.
Second, distinguishing between different sorts of practice can be pragmatically important. Since not all genocides or examples of mass ethnic violence work the same way, we don’t fully understand them if we don’t make such distinctions. While no genocide or ethnic cleansing will ever be easy to respond to – either in understanding what an appropriate response would be or in implementing that response, and while no amount of understanding will alone provide the political will necessary to appropriately respond, lack of full understanding will almost certainly doom any response, no matter how well intentioned, to failure.
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