Genocide is one of the most pressing issues that confronts us today. Its death toll is staggering: over one hundred million dead. Because of their intimate experience in the communities where genocide takes place, anthropologists are uniquely positioned to explain how and why this mass annihilation occurs and the types of devastation genocide causes. This ground breaking book, the first collection of original essays on genocide to be published in anthropology, explores a wide range of cases, including Nazi Germany, Cambodia, Guatemala, Rwanda, and Bosnia.
Alexander Laban Hinton is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Rutgers University. He is editor of Biocultural Approaches to the Emotions (1999) and Genocide: An Anthropological Reader (2001).
"Fresh, useful, and engaging. This timely book reflects new research and important critical perspectives on the role of social science and the response of anthropology to human suffering."—Richard Pierre Claude, Founding Editor of Human Rights Quarterly
"Many peoples of the world, including the Mayans in Guatemala, have been devastated and destroyed by genocide. Over many years these horrors remained only in the hearts and memory of the victims. The testimonies of the survivors who had the courage to denounce these crimes are making a contribution to scientific research. In Annihilating Difference, anthropologists grapple with an urgent public issue, taking new points of view that could help understand the magnitude of past atrocities and develop strategies to prevent future massacres in the heart of humanity."—Rigoberta Menchú Tum, 1992 Nobel Peace Prize laureate
"This volume—a collection of writings on genocide from the perspective of anthropology-seeks a deeper understanding of our era's most heinous crime. It asks not only what happened but why it happened. It seeks not simply to describe but to explain. And in offering an explanation of this horrendous social malady, it points the direction for a possible cure."—Kenneth Roth, Executive Director, Human Rights Watch, from the Foreword
"This volume ranges far and wide across centuries and cultures to present fascinating perspectives on the phenomenon of genocide. It is a new venture for anthropologists, whose insights will be useful to us all and who connect their scholarship to profound moral concerns."—Howard Zinn, author of You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train
"Annihilating Difference is an anthropological collection that warrants the attention of non-anthropologists. It simultaneously adds to the growing body of knowledge about genocide and provides a revealing glimpse into what anthropologists are studying and how they are studying it."—Donald L. Horowitz, author of The Deadly Ethnic Riot
419 pp.6 x 9Illus: 11 b/w photographs, 3 line illustrations, 2 tables
9780520230293$34.95|£30.00Paper
Aug 2002