Cultural genocide and indigenous peoples: a sociological approach

Abstract

This contribution argues that the dominant understanding of genocide as mass killing is sociologically inadequate and at odds with the ideas of the author of the concept, Raphael Lemkin. To date sociological approaches to genocide have failed to appreciate the importance of culture and social death to the concept of genocide. There is insufficient serious discussion of culturally destructive processes, which do not involve direct physical killing or violence, through the analytical lens of genocide. This is especially true when it comes to the experiences of indigenous peoples in the world today. When they invoke the term genocide to describe their present day experiences it is often derided. In the second half of this contribution, however, I argue that indigenous peoples' use of the concept is often more accurate and precise than that espoused by many academics and call for more research into seemingly benign processes of indigenous ‘cultural diffusion’ but through the analytical lens of genocide.

Keywords:

• Raphael Lemkin
• genocide
• culture
• indigenous peoples

Notes

Damien Short, ‘Sociological and Anthropological Perspectives on Human Rights’, in Human Rights, Politics and Practice, ed. Mark Goodhart (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 102.

Ibid., 97.

Irving Horowitz, Taking Lives: Genocide and State Power (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1982), 3.

Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), 9–10.

For example Gerald E. Markle has stated; ‘The sad truth appears to be that the Holocaust has not been terribly significant to my discipline, and my discipline has not been terribly significant to the study of the Holocaust’ – Gerald E. Markle, ‘The Holocaust and Sociology’, in Lessons and Legacies 111: Memory, Memorialization, and Denial, ed. Peter Hayes (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1999), 33–40; on this point see also Martin Shaw, ‘Sociology and Genocide’, in The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies, ed. Donald Bloxham and Dirk Moses (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010): 142–62; and Deborah A. Abowitz, ‘Bringing the Sociological into the Discussion: Teaching the Sociology of Genocide and the Holocaust’, Teaching Sociology 30 (2002): 26–38, and yet this overlooks some highly influential sociological studies such as Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust; Vahakn Dadrian, ‘A Typology of Genocide’, International Review of Modern Sociology 5 (1975): 201–12; Richard F. Hamilton Who Voted for Hitler? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 1982); Jack Nusan Porter, ‘The Holocaust as a Sociological Construct’, Contemporary Jewry 14 (1993): 184–7.

On this point see Martin Shaw, What is Genocide? (Cambridge: Polity, 2007), 7; and for an example of such ideological ‘wars’ see the now classic book: Alan S. Rosenbaum, Is the Holocaust Unique?: Perspectives on Comparative Genocide (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995).

For further discussion on this point see Ann Curthoys and John Docker, ‘Defining Genocide’, in The Historiography of Genocide, ed. Dan Stone (Basingstoke: Macmillan Publishers Limited, 2008), 26; and Adam Jones, Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction (London: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Publishers, 2006), 20–1.

See Shaw, ‘Sociology and Genocide’, 148 and 145.

Indeed, while Abowitz, ‘Bringing the Sociological into the Discussion’, has a point about a relative lack of social engagement, we should not downplay the significance of the following important sociological studies: Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn, The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990); Helen Fein, Genocide: A Sociological Perspective (London: Sage, 1993); Leo Kuper, Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981). Add to these the more recent sociological contributions: Christopher Powell, ‘What Do Genocides Kill? A Relational Conception of Genocide’, Journal of Genocide Research 9, no. 4 (December 2007): 527–47, 534. Shaw, What is Genocide?; Robert Van Kreiken, ‘The Barbarism of Civilization: Cultural Genocide and the “Stolen Generations”’, British Journal of Sociology 50, no. 2 (June 1999): 297–315; and Robert Van Kreiken, ‘Rethinking Cultural Genocide: Aboriginal Child Removal and Settler-Colonial State Formation’, Oceania 75, no. 2 (2004): 125–51; and Robert Van Kreiken, ‘Cultural Genocide’, in The Historiography of Genocide, ed. D. Stone (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 128–55.

A. Palmer, Colonial Genocide (London: Crawford House Publishing, 2000), 25.

For a discussion of the narrowing of the definition of genocide in the 1980s see Curthoys and Docker, ‘Defining Genocide’, 26.

Jones, Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction, 22.

Chalk and Jonassohn, The History and Sociology of Genocide.

See Palmer, Colonial Genocide, 25.

Mark Levene, Genocide in the Age of the Nation State, vol. 1: The Meaning of Genocide (New York and London: I. B. Tauris, 2005).

Ibid.

Howard Becker, Outsiders (New York: Free Press, 1997 reprint).

On this point see Fein, Genocide: A Sociological Perspective, 14.

Chalk and Jonassohn, The History and Sociology of Genocide, 25.

Fein, Genocide: A Sociological Perspective, 23–4.

Ibid., 23–4.

Ibid., 23.

Ibid., 24.

In British common law ‘foresight and recklessness are evidence from which intent may be inferred’, see J. Wien in R. v. Belfon (1976) 3 All ER 46.

Powell, ‘What Do Genocides Kill? A Relational Conception of Genocide’; Shaw, What is Genocide?.

Some key writings from the main authors in the area: Tony Barta, (2000) ‘Relations of Genocide: Land and Lives in the Colonization of Australia’, in Genocide and the Modern Age: Etiology and Case Studies of Mass Death, ed. Walliman and Dobrowski (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2000), 237–52; John Docker, ‘Are Settle Colonies Inherently Genocidal? Re-Reading Lemkin’, in A. Dirk Moses, ed Empire, Colony, Genocide: Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern Resistance in World History (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2008); A. Dirk Moses, ‘An Antipodean Genocide? The Origins of the Genocidal Moment in the Colonization of Australia’, Journal of Genocide Research 2, no. 1 (2000): 89–106; A. Dirk Moses, ‘Genocide and Settler Society in Australian History’, in Genocide and Settler Society: Frontier Violence and Stolen Indigenous Children in Australian History, ed. Dirk Moses (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2004), 3–48; Dirk Moses, ‘Empire, Colony, Genocide: Keywords and the Philosophy of History’, in Empire, Colony, Genocide: Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern Resistance in World History, ed. D. Moses (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2008), 3–54; and the book D.A. Moses and D. Stone, eds, Colonialism and Genocide (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006). See also these two excellent pieces Dominik Schaller, ‘Colonialism and Genocide – Raphael Lemkin's Concept of Genocide and its Application to European Rule in Africa’, Development Dialogue, no. 50 (December 2008): 75–93; Jürgen Zimmerer, ‘Colonialism and the Holocaust – Towards an Archaeology of Genocide’, Development Dialogue, no. 50 (December 2008): 95–123.

Shaw, ‘Sociology and Genocide’, 146.

Tony Barta, ‘Decent Disposal: Australian Historians and the Recovery of Genocide’, in The Historiography of Genocide, ed. Dan Stone (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 296–322, 297.

Patrick Wolfe, ‘Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native’, Journal of Genocide Research 8, no. 4 (December 2006): 387–409, 388.

Ibid., 388.

Ibid., 387.

Michael Freeman, Human Rights: An Interdisciplinary Approach (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002), 85.

For a summary of these see the UN webpage: http://www.hrweb.org/legal/undocs.html (accessed 2 September 2010).

For a discussion of a prime example of a rights institutionalisation project that demonstrates the importance of Freeman's warning see my (2007) contribution: Damien Short, ‘The Social Construction of “Native Title” Land Rights in Australia’, Current Sociology 55 (2007): 857.

For a good summary of Lemkin's tireless lobbying efforts see Samantha Power, A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (London: Flamingo, 2003), and for a detailed discussion of the political wrangles during the Convention's construction see William Schabas, Genocide in International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 51–101.

On the social construction of the genocide convention and the question of cultural genocide see generally the pieces by Van Kreiken, ‘The Barbarism of Civilization’, 297–315; and Van Kreiken, ‘Rethinking Cultural Genocide’, 125–51; and in particular Van Kreiken, ‘Cultural Genocide’, 128–55.

See Kuper, Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century, 31; and Ward Churchill, A Little Matter of Genocide, Holocaust and Denial in the Americas 1492 to the Present, (San Francisco, CA: City Light Books, 1997), 411.

J. Morsink, ‘Cultural Genocide, the Universal Declaration, and Minority Rights’, Human Rights Quarterly 21, no. 4 (November 1999), 1009–1060.

For the final text of the 2007 Declaration see http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/en/drip.html (accessed 2 September 2010); and for a discussion of the global indigenous movement's impact on international law see Rhiannon Morgan, ‘Advancing Indigenous Rights at the United Nations: Strategic Framing and its Impact on the Normative Development of International Law’, Social and Legal Studies 13, no. 4 (2004): 481–501.

Raphael Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation – Analysis of Government – Proposals for Redress (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1944), 79–95. For further discussion on this see Dirk Moses, ‘Raphael Lemkin, Culture, and the Concept of Genocide’, in Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies, ed. Donald Bloxham and A. Dirk Moses (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 19–41.

Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, 79.

See Moses, ‘Raphael Lemkin, Culture, and the Concept of Genocide’.

in Moses, ‘Empire, Colony, Genocide’, 12.

Ibid.

See Jones, Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction, 13.

Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, 91.

M.A. McDonnell and A.D. Moses, ‘Raphael Lemkin as Historian of Genocide in the Americas’, Journal of Genocide Research 7, no. 4 (2005): 504–05.

Powell, ‘What Do Genocides Kill? A Relational Conception of Genocide’, 534.

Moses, ‘Raphael Lemkin, Culture, and the Concept of Genocide’, 3.

Shaw, What is Genocide?, 113.

Ibid.,117.

Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, 79.

Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, Article 7: Crimes against humanity. For a discussion of these crimes see Cherif Bassiouni, Crimes Against Humanity in International Criminal Law, 2nd ed. (Boston: Kluwer Law International, 1999).

Moses, ‘Empire, Colony, Genocide’, 3–54, 12–13.

In Docker, ‘Raphael Lemkin's History of Genocide and Colonialism’, 3.

Ibid.

See http://www.cpsu.org.uk/index.php?id=75 (accessed 5 September 2010). For a detailed discussion on these issues see C. Samson and D. Short, ‘Sociology of Indigenous Peoples’ Rights', in Rights: Sociological Perspectives, ed. L. Morris (London: Routledge, 2006).

L. Behrendt, ‘Genocide: The Distance Between Law and Life’, Aboriginal History 25 (2001): 132–47, 132.

Patrick Wolfe, ‘Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native’, Journal of Genocide Research 8, No. 4 (2006): 387–409.

Davis and Zannis cited in Dirk Moses, ‘Conceptual Blockages and Definitional Dilemmas in the “Racial Century”: Genocides of Indigenous Peoples and the Holocaust’, Patterns of Prejudice 36, no. 4 (2002): 7–36, 24.

In particular the right to ‘free prior and informed consent’ of those indigenous peoples affected by them – now an established international core principle most recently enshrined in Article 19 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/en/drip.html (accessed 2 September 2010).

Macdonald Stainsby, ‘The Richest First Nation in Canada: Ecological and Political Life in Fort McKay’, The Dominion, no. 48 (2007), available at http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/1457 (accessed 2 September 2010).

A damning report on waterway pollution, highlighting arsenic amongst other highly toxic substances: Kevin P. Timoney, A Study of Water and Sediment Quality as Related to Public Health Issues (Sherwood Park, AB: Treeline Ecological Research, 2007), available at http://www.cbc.ca/edmonton/features/fort_chipewyan/pdf/fc-final-report-revised-dec2007.pdf (accessed 2 September 2010).

Kim Petersen, ‘Oil Versus Water: Toxic Water Poses Threat to Alberta's Indigenous Communities’, The Dominion, no. 48 (October 15, 2007), available at http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/1429 (accessed 2 September 2010).

For example, the Dene, Cree and Metis communities in Treaty 8 and Treaty 11 Territories.

Interviewed in Petersen, ‘Oil Versus Water’.

See Docker, ‘Raphael Lemkin's History of Genocide and Colonialism’, on this point.

Moses, ‘Empire, Colony, Genocide’, 13.

Ibid.

Secretariat Draft, ‘First Draft of the Genocide Convention’, Prepared by the UN Secretariat, [May] 1947 [UN Doc. E/447].

Docker, ‘Are Settler Colonies Inherently Genocidal?’, 96.

Ibid.

Moses, ‘Empire, Colony, Genocide’, 11.

Ibid.

Ibid., 14.

Ibid.

In contemporary terms if cultural change were to occur whilst indigenous peoples were exercising their right of Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) – which is a requirement, prerequisite and manifestation of the exercise of their fundamental right to self-determination as defined in international law – then such changes would not be genocidal. See United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples 2007, especially Article 19, http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/en/drip.html (accessed 2 September 2010).

Moses, ‘Empire, Colony, Genocide’, 16.

Ibid.

Ibid.

The work of Talcott Parsons is arguably the prime example of this, see T. Parsons, The Structure of Social Action (New York: Free Press, 1937); and more generally T. Parsons, Structure and Process in Modern Societies (New York: Free Press, 1960).

Powell, ‘What Do Genocides Kill?’, 538.

Ibid.

See M. Abed, ‘Clarifying the Concept of Genocide’, Metaphilosophy 37, nos 3–4 (2006): 308–30.

Ibid.

Ibid.

See Ibid. for other examples.

F. Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1958), 109.

C. Card, ‘Genocide and Social Death’, Hypatia 18, no. 1 (2003): 63–79, emphasis added.

See Wolfe, ‘Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native’, on this point.

Powell, ‘What Do Genocides Kill?’, 538.

Ibid., emphasis added.

Ibid., 539.

C. Samson, ‘Indigenous Peoples’ Rights: Anthropology and the Right to Culture’, in Interpreting Human Rights: Social Science Perspectives, ed. R. Morgan and B. Turner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 68–86.

See Ibid. on this point.

See the seminal report of UN Special Raporteur Erica Daes, ‘Indigenous Peoples and Their Relationship to Land, Final Working Paper’, Commission on Human Rights, Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, Fifty-third session, http://www.unhchr.ch/Huridocda/Huridoca.nsf/0/78d418c307faa00bc1256a9900496f2b/$FILE/G0114179.pdf (accessed 2 September 2010).

C. Samson, ‘Indigenous Peoples’ Rights’, 68–86.

Ibid.

J. Pretty, B. Adams, F. Berkes, S. de Athayde, N. Dudley, E. Hunn, L. Maffi, K. Milton, D. Rapport, P. Robbins, C. Samson, E. Sterling, S. Stolton, K. Takeuchi, A. Tsing, E. Vintinner and S. Pilgrim, ‘How Do Nature and Culture Intersect?’, Plenary Contribution for Conference Sustaining Cultural and Biological Diversity In a Rapidly Changing World: Lessons for Global Policy, organised by AMNH, IUCN-The World Conservation Union/Theme on Culture and Conservation, and Terralingua, New York, 2–5 April 2008. Copy on file with author.

Which while in a process of continual change had a definite historical form. This point is made by Powell, ‘What Do Genocides Kill?’, 538 with a Cree example.

Abed, ‘Clarifying the Concept of Genocide’, 312.

Ibid., 309.

Ibid.

Moses, ‘Empire, Colony, Genocide’, 12.

Wolfe, ‘Settler Colonialism’, 118.

Wolfe, ‘Settler Colonialism’.

See Short, ‘Sociological and Anthropological Perspectives on Human Rights’.