by Kurt Jonassohn

About the author: Kurt Jonassohn is a professor of sociology and the director of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada.

Scholarly attempts to understand the causes of genocide, the appearance of famines, and the generating of flows of refugees have been seriously hampered by overspecialization. Each of these areas has given rise to a considerable body of literature, which, however, rarely shows signs of familiarity with that of the
others.

Genocides, Famine, and Refugees

Genocides, including the Nazi Holocaust, have been written about very widely. Most scholars deal with only one genocide as either of the Armenians or of the Jews. Only recently has a small, but growing, group of scholars begun to apply a comparative approach to the study of genocides. Yet, not enough attention has been...