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Gendered Genocide: The Socially Destructive Process of Genocidal Rape, Killing, and Displacement in Darfur

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Joshua Kaiser  and
John Hagan
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Abstract

Accounts of mass atrocities habitually focus on one kind of violence and its archetypal victim, inviting uncritical, ungendered misconceptions: for example, rape only impacts women; genocide is only about dead, battle-aged men. We approach collective violence as multiple, intersecting forms of victimization, targeted and experienced through differential social identities, and translated throughout communities. Through mixed-method analyses of Darfuri refugees' testimonies, we show (a) gendered causes and collective effects of selective killing, sexual violence, and anti-livelihood crimes, (b) how they cause displacement, (c) that they can be genocidal and empirically distinct from nongenocidal forms, (d) how the process of genocidal social destruction can work, and (e) how it does work in Darfur. Darfuris are victimized through gender roles, yielding a gendered meaning-making process that communicates socially destructive messages through crimes that selectively target other genders. The collective result is displacement and destruction of Darfuris' ways of life: genocide.

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Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , March 2015 , pp. 69 - 107
Copyright
© 2015 Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

We are grateful to Wenona Rymond-Richmond, Jamie Rowan, Jaimie Morse, Eric Reeves, Nicole Rafter, Laurel Fletcher, Joachim Savelsberg, Suzy Maves McElrath, Fiona Chin, Daphne Demetry, Nicole Kaufman, Chez Rumpf, Megan Welsh, Gabrielle Ferrales, Cawo Abdi, Patricia Parker, the Chicago Area Law & Society Writing Seminar, the LSR editors and reviewers, and others who offered helpful support and comments. This work was supported by NSF grant LSS 0550299 and the American Bar Foundation.

References

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