Genocide as Contentious Politics

Abstract

Despite a recent turn towards the study of political violence within the field of contentious politics, scholars have yet to focus their lens on genocide. This is puzzling, as the field of collective action and social movements was originally developed in reaction to fascism (Nazism in particular), while research on collective action and research on genocide have long shown parallel findings and shared insights. This paper reviews the history of this scholarly convergence and divergence, and suggests that recent findings of research on genocide can be improved by the consideration of concepts from social movements and collective action. It then details three theories of the micro-mechanisms that mobilize individuals for contentionframing, diffusion, and networks -and specifies how they refine existing explanations of civilian participation in genocide. In the conclusion, I suggest that a contentious politics approach to genocide would consider it one form of collective action among others, analyzable within the existing framework of collective action and social movement theory.

The Contribution of Social Movement Theory to Understanding Genocide

“…Following Beck, in 2015, I made a similar argument, suggesting that social movement theory has much to contribute to understanding genocide (Luft 2015a). In particular, I argued that the same mobilization mechanisms found in other forms of contentious politics are often found in genocides, including framing and diffusion processes, while networks, I argued, can help pull people both toward participation in violence as well as away from it (see also Luft 2015b).…”

“…As a result, the years since have seen a surge of research on political violence and social movements (in addition to the above, see Bosi and Giugni 2012;Maney et al 2012;and Oberschall 2004). Despite these developments, social movement research has said very little about genocide, 1 even though the field itself was originally developed in reaction to fascism (Nazism in particular), a political movement responsible for arguably the worst genocide of the twentieth century (Luft 2015a;Meyer 2004).…”