Barbaric Civilization: A Critical Sociology of Genocide

365 Pages·2011·1.603 MB·English

by  Christopher Powell

barbaric civilization
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Barbaric Civilization
A Critical Sociology of Genocide
CHRISTOPHER POWELL
McGill-Queen’s University Press
Montreal & Kingston London Ithaca
• •
© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2011
isbn 978-0-7735-3855-9 (cloth)
isbn 978-0-7735-3856-6 (paper)
Legal deposit third quarter 2011
Bibliothèque nationale du Québec
Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest
free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free
This book has been published with the help of a grant from
the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences,
through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds
provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
of Canada.
McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the
Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also
acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada
through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Powell, Christopher John, 1971–
Barbaric civilization: a critical sociology of genocide / Christopher Powell.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7735-3855-9 (bound). – ISBN 978-0-7735-3856-6 (pbk.)
1. Genocide. 2. Civilization, Western. 3. Critical theory. I. Title.
Hv6322.7.p69 2011 304.6'63 C2011-900675-8
This book was typeset by Interscript in 10.5/13 Sabon.
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 3
Part one
1 A Critical Sociology of Genocide 23
2 Identifying Genocide 58
3 Closing the Theory Gap in the Sociology of Genocide 85
4 Civilizing Genocides and Barbaric Civilization 126
Part two
5 Genocides of Ideological Others in Languedoc and
Guatemala 165
6 Genocides of Colonized Others in Tasmania and India 201
7 Genocides of National Others in the Ottoman Empire
and Rwanda 246
Conclusion 301
Appendix: Definitions of Genocide 311
References 321
Index 347
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Acknowledgments
Groundwork for this book was laid in my doctoral dissertation,
“Civilization and Genocide,” which received financial support through
the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada’s
Doctoral Fellowship, the Ontario Graduate Scholarship, the Carleton
University Graduate Scholarship, and the Zbigniew A. Jordan
Scholarship. I would like to thank each of these funders for their
support of independent academic scholarship in Canada.
Funding provided by the University of Manitoba’s University
Research Grants Program and through a Faculty of Graduate Studies
research assistant grant paid for research that informed the early
chapters of the book. I’d to thank Farzana Quddus and Mahmudur
Bhuiyan for their diligent work on these grants.
Crucial reworking of the core theoretical model of the book took place
on a research/study leave in winter 2006, and substantial rewriting of the
historical chapters took place on a research/study leave in winter 2010,
granted by the University of Manitoba Faculty of Arts. I would also like
to thank the University of Manitoba Faculty Association for having ne-
gotiated the provisions for these leaves into our collective agreement,
work for which I was not present but from which I benefited.
I would like to thank all of my colleagues in the Department of
Sociology at the University of Manitoba for their unflagging prac-
tical and moral support of my research, for providing a welcoming
and friendly environment as I carried out this idiosyncratic project,
and for continuing to express confidence in my work even as I blew
past one self-declared completion date after another.
Similarly, I wish to thank Philip Cercone of McGill-Queen’s
University Press for having remained interested in this project for
viii Acknowledgments
over six years. I am grateful to Brenda Prince, Jessica Howarth, Joan
McGilvray, Filomena Falocco, Jacqueline Davis, Katie Heffring, and
Robert Lewis for patiently shepherding me through the various as-
pects of the publication process. I’d also like to thank the two anony-
mous peer reviewers for their indispensable contribution to this
process and for their invaluable critical feedback.
Many friends and family members have contributed to the realiza-
tion of this project through their encouragement and their intellec-
tual engagement. Any list of those whom I especially wish to thank
would necessarily be incomplete, so I will refrain from thanking
people individually – with one necessary exception. I owe a debt of
gratitude that no words can repay to Sheryl Peters for her inexhaust-
ible conviction in the value of this work, for insightful criticism that
pushed me to take my ideas further and closer to home than I had
dared on my own, and for holding me accountable in practice to the
relational egalitarianism that I have tried to articulate in theory. Her
involvement in this process has made the document a better book,
and me a better person.
barbaric civilization