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Towards an Explanation for the Bosnian Genocide of 1992–1995
Author(s) -
Hoare Marko Attila
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
studies in ethnicity and nationalism
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.204
H-Index - 8
eISSN - 1754-9469
pISSN - 1473-8481
DOI - 10.1111/sena.12111
Subject(s) - bosnian , genocide , criminology , political science , sociology , law , philosophy , linguistics
The Bosnian genocide of 1992-1995 played a decisive role in raising both popular awareness and scholarly interest in the phenomenon of genocide. Exploding across television screens and newspapers worldwide, it was the first genocide to be covered by modern media in a manner that allowed millions of international bystanders to follow it more or less as it unfolded. Together with the contemporaneous Rwandan genocide, it highlighted the fact that genocide is not the very rare phenomenon confined to past times and distant places that so many people in the West and elsewhere supposed it to be, but something much more ubiquitous to our contemporary age, capable equally of engulfing white Europeans and black Africans. The pride of place that the Bosnian genocide, along with its Rwandan counterpart, holds as a case-study in thematic works of ‘genocide studies’ – a scholarly discipline that largely owes its existence to the two of them – is testimony to its enduring scholarly impact. This has been mirrored by the changes in international politics and institutions that have arisen in the past two decades, largely or at least partly as a result of the genocides of the first half of the 1990s: the rise of international criminal tribunals; the surge in support for the doctrine of ‘humanitarian intervention’; the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ doctrine; and a readiness of part of the international public to mobilise in opposition to new genocides or instances of mass killing or persecution – from Darfur through Syria to Burma. Yet the intellectual and historical significance of the Bosnian genocide has not been reflected in a concomitant scholarly interest in the subject. Very little serious scholarly research has been or is being carried out on the subject, and few serious monographs have been produced. Much of the most important work has been produced by journalists rather than academics. The greatest body of research has been the fruit not of research by academics, but by investigators at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The vast literature relating to the break-up of Yugoslavia and the wars of the 1990s is still dominated by works of synthesis recycling a limited base or sources, rather than works of original empirical research.