The Order of Genocide
Subtitle: Race, Power, And War in Rwanda
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: December 2006
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 273
ISBN-13: 9780801444487
Subjects: African history: postwar, from c 1945 -; Civil war; Genocide; c 1990 to c 2000; Political Freedom & Security - International Secur; Ethnic relations; Political Science; Politics / Current Events; Rwanda; Politics/International Relations; Civil War, 1994; Africa - Central; Atrocities; History
Description: "Challenging the prevailing wisdom, Straus provides substantial new evidence about local patterns of violence, using original research - including the most comprehensive surveys yet undertaken among convicted perpetrators - to assess competing theories about the causes and dynamics of the genocide. Current interpretations stress three main causes for the genocide: ethnic identity, ideology, and mass-media indoctrination (in particular the influence of hate radio). Straus's research does not deny the importance of ethnicity, but he finds that it operated more as a background condition. Instead, Straus emphasizes fear and intra-ethnic intimidation as the primary drivers of the violence. A defensive civil war and the assassination of a president created a feeling of acute insecurity. Rwanda's unusually effective state was also central, as was the country's geography and population density, which limited the number of exit options for both victims and perpetrators. In conclusion, Straus steps back from the particulars of the Rwandan genocide to offer a new, dynamic model for understanding other instances of genocide in recent history -- the Holocaust, Armenia, Cambodia, the Balkans -- and assessing the future likelihood of such events."--Jacket.