The Collective Dynamics of Racial Dehumanization and Genocidal Victimization in Darfur
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The Collective Dynamics of Racial Dehumanization and Genocidal Victimization in Darfur John Hagan Wenona Rymond-Richmond Northwestern University University of Massachusetts and American Bar Foundation Sociologists empirically and theoretically neglect genocide. In this article, our critical collective framing perspective begins by focusing on state origins of race-based ideology in the mobilization and dehumanization leading to genocide. We elaborate this transformative dynamic by identifying racially driven macro-micro-macro-level processes that are theoretically underdeveloped and contested in many settings. We investigate generic processes by exploiting an unprecedented survey of refugees from the ongoing genocide in Darfur. Our focus is on the Sudanese government’s crisis framing of a dehumanizing collective process. Sudanese forces joined with Janjaweed militia to attack black African settlements. They aggregated and concentrated racial epithets in a collective process of dehumanization and organized terror, which amplified the severity of genocidal victimization, the lethal and lasting scar of the genocidal state. Our findings question primordial and counter-insurgency explanations, while supporting aspects of the instrumental, population–resource, constructionist, and cognitive Delivered by Ingenta to : perspectives that form the foundationUNIVERSITY of our critical OF WASHINGTONcollective framing perspective. It has been more than 50 years since SutherlandTue, 28famously Apr 2009 added 05:04:14 white-collar crime to public sociology, radically reordering discourse about crime. It is time to do the same with Raphael Lemkin’s concept of genocide. e are Sudanese living in our home- THE SOCIOLOGY OF GENOCIDE “Wland. We have no problem with the Genocide is now widely discussed by journal- Sudanese government. They became our first ists and lawyers, but it still is neglected, mar- enemy, they do not protect us. They want to kill ginalized, and undertheorized by sociologists. Horowitz (1980:3) speculates that sociologists all the black people. Why? I can ask myself, and feel “a studied embarrassment about these also ask you.” issues, a feeling that intellectual issues posed in — Darfurian Refugee in Chad Camp such a manner are melodramatic and unfit for scientific discourse.” Fein (1990:7 and 2007:1) similarly insists that “the primary deterrent is our own inhibitions and lack of boldness.” Direct correspondence to John Hagan, MacArthur Further methodological difficulties are posed by Professor, Northwestern University, 1810 Chicago the unpredictability of genocides, the devasta- Avenue, Evanston, IL 60208 (j-hagan@northwestern. tion of whole groups and places, and govern- edu). We thank Alberto Palloni, Gabriele Plickert, ments’ participation and cover-ups. Stefanie Frease, Nina Bang-Jensen, Patricia Parker, Gabrielle Ferrales, Ronit Dinovitzer, Don Nonetheless, accounts of genocide assume Tomaskovic-Dewey, Eric Poehler, Katie Harr, and the fundamental sociological processes. These ASR editors and reviewers. This work was support- descriptions often emphasize dehumanization ed by NSF grant LSS 0550299 and the American Bar framed in terms of race, ethnicity, religion, or Foundation. nationhood. This process is usually depicted as AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW, 2008, VOL. 73 (December:875–902) 876—–AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW collectively driven—led by groups and leading and “this is the last day for blacks”) resulting in to group destruction. Yet few quantitative analy- violent victimization, which we analyze using ses evaluating these social aspects of genocide survey interviews about attacks on black African exist. This article investigates genocide in the villages. We show that the role of race is promi- context of Sudan, not because this time or place nently denied in this genocide, as it often is is unique, but because during the ongoing historically. Darfur genocide, for the first time in history, the The role of the state in activating racial dehu- U.S. government collected detailed data on manization leading to genocide is essential to racial dehumanization and intergroup violence. our critical collective framing theory.3 Through This allows us to address the fundamental ques- racial framing, the Sudanese government mobi- tion: How is racial genocide accomplished?1 lized local Arab Janjaweed militia toward much Brubaker and Laitin (1998:427) argue that death and destruction. Our critical collective “the most fundamental questions—for example, framing theory argues that this racial targeting how the adjective ‘ethnic’ modifies the noun was the socially constructed and critically con- ‘violence’—remain unclear and largely unex- tingent mechanism that mediated the influence amined” and that the answers require analysis of population–resource competition on genoci- of “the forms and dynamics of ethnicization.”2 dal victimization. We build on Katz’s (1988) We make a similar argument about racialization account of the role of cursing in the “righteous and dehumanization. The Sudanese state insti- slaughters” of intimates and acquaintances. We gated a collective framing process that dehu- hypothesize that racial epithets played a paral- manized its victims (black Africans in Darfur) lel role in transforming individual motivation and resulted in genocide. Although the details and intent into collectively organized dehu- are case specific, we cite parallel processes and manization and violence. More specifically, we illustrations from other genocides. hypothesize that the aggregation and concen- In Darfur, the dehumanization involved racial tration of racial epithets during attacks created epithets (e.g., “you are slaves, kill theDelivered slaves” by Ingenta to : UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTONa collective effect that intensified the severity Tue, 28 Apr 2009of 05:04:14genocidal violence. Collective dehumaniza- tion processes place groups outside the norma- 1 The question of why Sudan indiscriminately tive universe of moral protection, leaving them attacks black Africans is in one sense simple: because vulnerable to targeted genocidal victimization. Sudan can, and cheaply. Black African rebels are a These racialized and collectivized dehuman- threat. De Waal (2007) calls indiscriminate attacks ization processes establish the contingent con- “counter-insurgency on the cheap.” China and Russia ditions for genocide (Fein 1990). sell Sudan the limited weaponry required to devas- First, we use historical material to establish tate the relatively defenseless black Africans, while the ideological link in Darfur between the fending off the UN for trade advantages. So the larg- Sudanese state and the targeting of three black er question is: How does Sudan do genocide so effi- African groups: the Zaghawa, Fur, and Masalit. ciently? That is, how does Sudan accomplish We then analyze the historically unprecedent- genocide? In this sense, the answer to the question of how becomes the explanation of why. 2 Most scholarly discussions of genocide focus on this concept as a noun. For example, Gurr and 3 The expanding research literature on genocide Harff (1994) advocate expanding genocide to include focuses on problems of definition (e.g., Chirot and political conflicts. Others advocate including non- Edwards 2003; Fein 1990), the identification of lethal acts that threaten group members (Lemkin antecedents (e.g., Gurr and Harff 1994; Horowitz 1946), emphasizing the role of the state (Horowitz 2001), disputes about scale (e.g., Hagan and Palloni 1980), highlighting one-sided killing by the state 2006; Heuveline 2001), the creation of typologies (Chalk and Jonassohn 1990), excluding ethnocide (e.g., Chalk and Jonassohn 1990; Chirot and (Chalk and Jonassohn 1990), and specifying geno- McCauley 2006; Lemkin 1946), and the develop- cide as political mass murder (Chirot and Edwards ment of explanatory approaches considered below. 2003). These definitions are insightful for probing the Our distinctive focus is on the dehumanizing racial boundaries of genocide, but our interest here is in motivations and intentions that explain how a gov- understanding how dehumanizing processes of col- ernment mobilizes and collaborates in the ideologi- lective racial and ethnic framing drive genocidal vic- cal dehumanization and criminal victimization of a timization. racial group. COLLECTIVE DYNAMICS OF GENOCIDAL VICTIMIZATION IN DARFUR—–877 ed U.S. State Department’s Atrocities The various tribes that have been the objects of Documentation Survey (ADS) data on racial attacks and killings (chiefly the Fur, Masalit and dehumanization and violence collected during Zaghawa tribes) do not appear to make up ethnic groups distinct from the ethnic group to which the Darfur genocide. We use these data to doc- persons or militias that attack them belong. They ument the combined role of Sudanese and speak the same language (Arabic) and embrace the Janjaweed forces in the incitement of racial epi- same religion (Muslim). In addition, also due to the thets to collectively dehumanize and victimize measure of intermarriage, they can hardly be dis- black African groups. Finally, we use narratives tinguished in their outward physical appearance from the ADS interviews to document the organ- from the members of tribes that allegedly attacked ized leadership and integration of Janjaweed them. (UN 2005:129) with Sudanese forces in perpetrating genocide. Although this UN Commission conceded We present this crucial interstitial link last to that victims of violence in Darfur might sub-