Governments, Citizens, and Genocide: A Comparative and Interdisciplinary Approach » (New Edition)

Alex Alvarez earned his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of New Hampshire in 1991 and is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Northern Arizona University. His primary areas of study have focused on minorities, crime, and criminal justice, as well as on collective and interpersonal violence. He has published on Native Americans, Latinos, and African Americans, fear of crime, sentencing, justifiable and criminal homicide, and genocide. He is currently writing a book on patterns of American murder.

More people have been killed in 20th-century genocides than in all wars and revolutions in the same period. Recent events in countries such as Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia have drawn attention to the fact that genocide is a pressing contemporary problem, one that has involved the United States in varying negotiating and peace-keeping roles. Genocide is increasingly recognized as a threat to national and international security, as well as a source of tremendous human suffering and social devastation.

Governments, Citizens, and Genocide views the crime of genocide through the lens of social science. It discusses the problem of defining genocide and then examines it from the levels of the state, the organization, and the individual. Alex Alvarez offers both a skillful synthesis of the existing literature on genocide and important new insights developed from the study of criminal behavior. He shows that governmental policies and institutions in genocidal states are designed to suppress the moral inhibitions of ordinary individuals.

By linking different levels of analysis, and comparing a variety of cases, the study provides a much more complex understanding of genocide than have prior studies. Based on lessons drawn from his analysis, Alvarez offers an important discussion of the ways in which genocide might be anticipated and prevented.

About the Author:
Alex Alvarez earned his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of New Hampshire in 1991 and is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Northern Arizona University. He is primarily interested in the issues of minorities, crime, and criminal justice, as well as on collective and interpersonal violence. His publications have appeared in journals such as the Journal of Criminal Justice, Social Science History, and the Sociological Imagination. Professor Alvarez is currently writing a book on patterns of American murder.