Genocide in Cambodia and Rwanda: New Perspectives

This volume deals with aspects of genocide in Rwandaand Cambodia that have been largely unexplored to date, including the impact of regional politics and the role played by social institutions in perpetrating genocide. Although the "story" of the Cambodian genocide of 1975-1979 and that of the Rwandan genocide of 1994 have been written about in detail, most have focused on how the genocides took place, what the ideas and motives were that led extremist factions to attempt to kill whole sections of their country's population, and who their victims were. This volume builds on our understanding of genocide in Cambodia and Rwanda by bringing new issues, sources, and approaches into focus.

The chapters in this book are grouped so that a single theme's explored in both the Cambodian and Rwandan contexts; their ordering is designed to facilitate comparative analysis. The first three chapters emphasize the importance of political discourse in the genocidal process. Chapters 4 and 5 examine social institutions and explore their role in the genocidal process. Chapters 6 and 7 describe the military trajectories of the genocidal regimes in Cambodia and Rwanda after their overthrow, showing that genocide and genocidal intents as a political program do not cease the moment the massacres subside. The final chapters deal with private and public efforts to memorialize the genocides in the months and years following the killing.

Drawing on ten years of genocide studies at Yale, this excellent anthology assembles high-quality new research from a variety of continents, disciplines, and languages. It will be an important addition to ongoing research on genocide.

Drawing on a decade of genocide studies at Yale University, nine contributors from around the world explore themes common to the two episodes, in Cambodia in 1975-79 and Rwanda in 1994. They look at the role of political discourse, social institutions, the military trajectories of the genocidal regimes, and private and public efforts to memorialize the genocides. There is no index. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Susan E. Cook worked at the Cambodian Genocide Program at Yale University from 1994 to 2001. She is now senior lecturer in the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology at the University of Pretoria. She also lived and worked in Botswana from 1989 to 1991.