Conceptualizing Mass Violence draws attention to the conspicuous inability to inhibit mass violence in myriads forms and considers the plausible reasons for doing so. Focusing on a postcolonial perspective, the volume seeks to popularize and institutionalize the study of mass violence in South Asia. The essays explore and deliberate upon the varied aspects of mass violence, namely revisionism, reconstruction, atrocities, trauma, memorialization and literature, the need for Holocaust education, and the criticality of dialogue and reconciliation. The language, content, and characteristics of mass violence/genocide explicitly reinforce its aggressive, transmuting, and multifaceted character and the consequent necessity to understand the same in a nuanced manner. The book is an attempt to do so as it takes episodes of mass violence for case study from all inhabited continents, from the twentieth century to the present. The volume studies ‘consciously enforced mass violence’ through an interdisciplinary approach and suggests that dialogue aimed at reconciliation is perhaps the singular agency via which a solution could be achieved from mass violence in the global context. The volume is essential reading for postgraduate students and scholars from the interdisciplinary fields of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, History, Political Science, Sociology, World History, Human Rights, and Global Studies.

As the most comprehensive edited volume to be published on perpetrators and perpetration of mass violence, the volume sets a new agenda for perpetrator research by bringing together contributions from such diverse disciplines as political science, sociology, social psychology, history, anthropology and gender studies, allowing for a truly interdisciplinary discussion of the phenomenon of perpetration. The cross-case nature of the volume allows the reader to see patterns across case studies, bringing findings from inter alia the Holocaust, the genocides in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, and the civil wars in Cambodia and Côte d’Ivoire into conversation with each other. The chapters of this volume are united by a common research interest in understanding what constitutes perpetrators as actors, what motivates them, and how dynamics behind perpetration unfold. Their attention to the interactions between disciplines and cases allows for the insights to be transported into more abstract ideas on perpetration in general. Amongst other aspects, they indicate that instead of being an extraordinary act, perpetration is often ordinary, that it is crucial to studying perpetrators and perpetration not from looking at the perpetrators as actors but by focusing on their deeds, and that there is a utility of ideologies in explaining perpetration, when we differentiate them more carefully and view them in a more nuanced light. This volume will be vital reading for students and scholars of genocide studies, human rights, conflict studies and international relations.

"This book explores the ways in which we research and respond to active and mass shooting events. It discusses methodological issues, the current body of knowledge about such incidents, police and tactical responses, prevention and intervention techniques, and future directions for research"--

This book examines postwar waves of political violence that affected six Southeast Asian countries – Indonesia, Burma/Myanmar, Cambodia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Vietnam – from the wars of independence in the mid-twentieth century to the recent Rohingya genocide. Featuring cases not previously explored, and offering fresh insights into more familiar cases, the chapters cover a range of topics including the technologies of violence, the politics of fear, inclusion and exclusion, justice and ethics, repetitions of mass violence events, impunity, law, ethnic and racial killings, crimes against humanity, and genocide. The book delves into the violence that has reverberated across the region spurred by local and global politics and ideologies, through the examination of such themes as identity ascription and formation, existential and ontological questions, collective memories of violence, and social and political transformation. In our current era of global social and political transition, the volume’s case studies provide an opportunity to consider potential repercussions and outcomes of various political and ideological positionings and policies. Enhancing our understanding of the technologies, techniques, motives, causes, consequences, and connections between violent episodes in the Southeast Asian cases, the book raises key questions for the study of mass violence worldwide.

In a decade that has seen the rise of far-right extremism, Western countries still face myriad threats of mass violence, including terrorism. Of particular concern is the phenomenon of “lone-wolf terrorism,” whereby acts of political violence are committed by individuals who are operating independently of any organized terrorist group, something which makes them inherently more difficult to identify in advance of an attack. Now there is a need for research that profiles these perpetrators, explores the incidents that occur, and analyzes the shifting changes in mass violence, technology, and terrorist behavior in modern times. Mitigating Mass Violence and Managing Threats in Contemporary Society explores the shifting definitions and implications of mass violence and covers important areas focused on the individuals who partake in these acts as well as weapon choice and the influence of weapon accessibility, how the attention-seeking behavior and promotion of violent actions is evolving, and how technology is used such as disseminating a manifesto prior to the incidents or using live streaming to broadcast incidents of mass violence as they transpire. The book also examines ways to prevent these incidents before they occur, which is a proven challenge with no single accurate profile for offenders, and whether perpetrators of mass violence share similar goals and motivations for their sprees, as well as commonalities in warning behaviors. This comprehensive research work is essential for law enforcement, military officials, defense specialists, national security experts, criminologists, psychologists, government officials, policymakers, lawmakers, professionals, practitioners, academicians, students, and researchers working in the fields of conflict analysis and resolution, crisis management, law enforcement, mental health, education, psychology, sociology, criminology, criminal justice, terrorism, and other social sciences.

The study of genocide has been appropriate in emphasizing the centrality of the Holocaust; yet, other preceding episodes of mass violence are of great significance. Taking a transnational and transhistorical approach, this volume redresses and replaces the silencing of the Armenian Genocide. Scholarship relating to the history of denial, comparative approaches in the deportations and killings of Greeks and Armenians during the First World War, and women’s histories during the genocide and post-genocide proliferated during the centennial of the Armenian Genocide in 2015. Collectively, however, these studies have not been enough to offer a comprehensive account of the historical record, documentation, and interpretation of events during 1915-1916. This study seeks to bridge the gap, by unsettling nationalist narratives and addressing areas such as aesthetics, gender, and sexuality. By bringing forward various dimensions of the human experience, including the political, socioeconomic, cultural, social, gendered, and legal contexts within which such silencing occurred, the essays address the methodological silences and processes of selectivity and exclusion in scholarship on the Armenian Genocide. The interdisciplinary approach makes Critical Approaches to Genocide a useful resource for all students and scholars interested in the Armenian Genocide and memory studies.

This book explores the multiplicity of women’s experiences in the Cambodian genocide during the four-year rule of the Khmer Rouge. The dominant discourses of genocide often speak from a patriarchal and national perspective, rendering women speechless, and yet in this volume, the female survivors of the Cambodian genocide testify not only to the specific atrocities committed during the war but also to the pre-war conditions that laid the groundwork for a gender-specific victimization of women and its continuation post-war. With the help of testimonies from Khmer women who joined the Khmer Rouge, women who experienced sexual violence during the Khmer Rouge era, women who fled the country, and the Cham women who faced expulsion from home, this book explores the diversity of women’s experiences under the Khmer Rouge. Survivors’ accounts show that a Khmer woman’s experience with the Khmer Rouge was considerably different from the experience of not only a Khmer man but also a woman from a religious or ethnic minority group or a woman who chose to join the Khmer Rouge. These differences are conveniently ignored in nationalist discourses in Cambodia and by western scholars of history and gender-based violence, and they are given even less consideration in discourses about women survivors in diaspora. Instead of forcing generalization and universalization of gendered crimes of war, Gender and Genocide in Cambodia employs feminist curiosity and closely examines women’s experiences under the Khmer Rouge from multiple vantage points. This volume is essential reading for students and scholars interested in gender and cultural studies, political history, and modern history.