How to Avoid the Genocide Trap. Genocide as a concept in historiography and social sciences
Journal: AREI
Year: 2022

This article argues that instead of using inconsistent and often tautological ad hoc definitions from social sciences and the humanities, the legal notion of genocide as it emerges from the Genocide Convention and the jurisprudence of international criminal tribunals should also be applied to historical atrocities. This helps to prevent the inflationary use of the term ‘genocide’, whose inevitable consequence is that this term is voided of any meaning. Using instead the legal concept makes it po