In the last two decades, the field of comparative genocide studies has produced an increasingly rich literature on the targeting of various groups for extermination and other atrocities, throughout history and around the contemporary world. However, the phenomenon of "genocides by the oppressed," that is, retributive genocidal actions carried out by subaltern actors, has received almost no attention. The prominence in such genocides of non-state actors, combined with the perceived moral ambiguities of retributive genocide that arise in analyzing genocidal acts "from below," have so far eluded serious investigation. Genocides by the Oppressed addresses this oversight, opening the subject of subaltern genocide for exploration by scholars of genocide, ethnic conflict, and human rights. Focusing on case studies of such genocide, the contributors explore its sociological, anthropological, psychological, symbolic, and normative dimensions.

Nicholas A. Robins' profile page

Adam Jones is a political scientist, writer, and photojournalist based at the University of British Columbia Okanagan in Kelowna, BC, Canada. He is the author of Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction and numerous other books in genocide studies. He is executive director of Gendercide Watch.

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[This] book offers connections between mass killing based on ethnicity and mass killing based on religion or politics, and between mass killing and the usually smaller killing of riots, massacres, and hate crimes. Although the book is framed as a challenge to genocide theory, perhaps its greater challenge is to any account of intergroup conflict that does not attend to intergroup emotions.March 2010

Contemporary Sociology