ABSTRACT

Genocide is not an area of study that can be bracketed within well-defined boundaries. The study of genocide is to define a primary social indicator that can help provide sociology with a quantitative equivalent of voting for politics and money for economics. With the aid of the classic tradition in political sociology, especially the work of Max Weber and the no less classic, neo-Kantian tradition in legal philosophy as exemplified by Hannah Arendt, it was possible, nay necessary, to rethink fundamental fault lines. The chapter shows genocide as part of a general theory of violence; or more broadly, the capacity of unbridled state power to utilize violence against a specific group in order to secure and maximize its own autonomous realm of operations. The issues can never be fully resolved or addressed to universal satisfaction. Even if the people develop a broad consensus at the general level, students of genocide will need to account for specific variations in grounded conditions.