The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda

Winner of the Award for Excellence in Government and Political Science (AAP)
The Rwandan genocide has become a touchstone for debates about the causes of mass violence and the responsibilities of the international community. Yet a number of key questions about this tragedy remain unanswered: How did the violence spread from community to community and so rapidly engulf the nation? Why did individuals make decisions that led them to take up machetes against their neighbors? And what was the logic that drove the campaign of extermination?
According to Scott Straus, a social scientist and former journalist in East Africa for several years (who received a Pulitzer Prize nomination for his reporting for the Houston Chronicle), many of the widely held beliefs about the causes and course of genocide in Rwanda are incomplete. They focus largely on the actions of the ruling elite or the inaction of the international community. Considerably less is known about how and why elite decisions became widespread exterminatory violence.
Challenging the prevailing wisdom, Straus provides substantial new evidence about local patterns of violence, using original research―including the most comprehensive surveys yet undertaken among convicted perpetrators―to assess competing theories about the causes and dynamics of the genocide. Current interpretations stress three main causes for the genocide: ethnic identity, ideology, and mass-media indoctrination (in particular the influence of hate radio). Straus's research does not deny the importance of ethnicity, but he finds that it operated more as a background condition. Instead, Straus emphasizes fear and intra-ethnic intimidation as the primary drivers of the violence. A defensive civil war and the assassination of a president created a feeling of acute insecurity. Rwanda's unusually effective state was also central, as was the country's geography and population density, which limited the number of exit options for both victims and perpetrators.
In conclusion, Straus steps back from the particulars of the Rwandan genocide to offer a new, dynamic model for understanding other instances of genocide in recent history―the Holocaust, Armenia, Cambodia, the Balkans―and assessing the future likelihood of such events.

History

Straus, Scott

Africa

Cornell University Press

Winner of the Grawmeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order, 2018 Winner of the Joseph Lepgold Prize Winner of the Best Books in Conflict Studies (APSA) Winner of the Best Book in Human Rights (ISA)
In Making and Unmaking Nations, Scott Straus seeks to explain why and how genocide takes place―and, perhaps more important, how it has been avoided in places where it may have seemed likely or even inevitable. To solve that puzzle, he examines postcolonial Africa, analyzing countries in which genocide occurred and where it could have but did not. Why have there not been other Rwandas? Straus finds that deep-rooted ideologies―how leaders make their nations―shape strategies of violence and are central to what leads to or away from genocide. Other critical factors include the dynamics of war, the role of restraint, and the interaction between national and local actors in the staging of campaigns of large-scale violence. Grounded in Straus's extensive fieldwork in contemporary Africa, the study of major twentieth-century cases of genocide, and the literature on genocide and political violence, Making and Unmaking Nations centers on cogent analyses of three nongenocide cases (Côte d'Ivoire, Mali, and Senegal) and two in which genocide took place (Rwanda and Sudan). Straus's empirical analysis is based in part on an original database of presidential speeches from 1960 to 2005. The book also includes a broad-gauge analysis of all major cases of large-scale violence in Africa since decolonization. Straus's insights into the causes of genocide will inform the study of political violence as well as giving policymakers and nongovernmental organizations valuable tools for the future.

Making and Unmaking Nations: War, Leadership, and Genocide in Modern Africa

In International Studies: Global Forces, Interactions, and Tensions, award-winning scholars Scott Straus and Barry Driscoll introduce your students to the foundations of International Studies; the major actors, institutions and theories; as well as the contemporary problems that will matter most to students.

International Studies: Global Forces, Interactions, and Tensions

Driscoll, Barry

Reference

CQ Press

The challenge of teaching international studies is to help you think coherently about the multiple causes and effects of global problems. In International Studies: Global Forces, Interactions, and Tensions, award-winning scholars Scott Straus and Barry Driscoll give you a clear framework that pinpoints how key factors―forces, interactions, and tensions―contribute to world events, with both global and local consequences. The authors first show you how to look for common patterns in global issues by introducing four world-shaping forces: global markets, shifting centers of power, information and communications technologies, and global governance. They systematically trace how these forces prompt interactions among world actors and thus give rise to a set of tensions that spur key challenges. The framework enables you to ask and answer for yourself―Who is interacting? Where did such interactions develop? What policies or institutions govern them? Why are they getting certain global and local reactions? You are then apply the framework to the global problems that matter most to you: human rights abuses, economic inequality, terrorism, forced migration, pandemics and global health responses, climate change, food security, and more. International Studies raises the bar for the Introduction to IS course, moving beyond interdisciplinary, and into the realm of critical analysis to increase student relevancy and motivation.

This bundle includes Scott Straus&#8242; International Studies&nbsp;and The CQ Researcher&#8242;s Global Issues

BUNDLE: Straus: International Studies + The CQ Researcher: Global Issues

Politics & Social Sciences

CQ Researcher

Politics & Government

BUNDLE: Straus: International Studies + Ubertaccio: The CQ Press Career Guide for Global Politics Students

Ubertaccio, Peter N. N.

Legal Theory & Systems

BUNDLE: Straus: International Studies + The CQ Research: Global Issues 2018 Edition

Africa's Stalled Development: International Causes and Cures

Business & Money

Leonard, David K.

Economics

Lynne Rienner Pub

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