Examining in detail the apparently inexorable polarization of society in such countries as Rwanda, Algeria, and South Africa, the author questions whether current theories correctly explain the past or offer adequate guides for the future. In their place he puts forward an alternative neo-Durkheimian view of the possibility of non-violent revolutionary change, based on the development of such social and cultural continuities as already exist within each plural society. But he warns that -this is an age of passionate commitment to violence in which vicarious killers abound in search of a...
Examining in detail the apparently inexorable polarization of society in such countries as Rwanda, Algeria, and South Africa, the author questions...
In a study that compares the major attempts at genocide in world history, Robert Melson creates a sophisticated framework that links genocide to revolution and war. He focuses on the plights of Jews after the fall of Imperial Germany and of Armenians after the fall of the Ottoman as well as attempted genocides in the Soviet Union and Cambodia. He argues that genocide often is the end result of a complex process that starts when revolutionaries smash an old regime and, in its wake, try to construct a society that is pure according to ideological standards.
In a study that compares the major attempts at genocide in world history, Robert Melson creates a sophisticated framework that links genocide to revol...
