Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity | Comparative Genocide

Some of the central questions attending the analysis of any genocide, such as the Holocaust or the Armenian genocide, are: Why did it happen? How did it happen? How similar or different is it from other instances? And, what can be learned to prevent such occurrences in the future? A comparative approach may be helpful in providing some answers because the principle aim of scholarly comparison is to identify essential similarities and underlying patterns in order to arrive at credible explanations or theories for some types of genocide. Such explanations should be able to shed light on particular instances of genocide as well as on the process itself. The juxtaposition and comparison of a number of cases do not imply that they are identical or even similar. Indeed, differences from an underlying pattern, such as the Holocaust or the Armenian genocide, can be instructive in demonstrating the range of variation among cases or in challenging...