Essay Example on Sociology & Holocaust/Genocide: A Complex Relation

Introduction

Sociology as a discipline has always been slow to get involved with Holocaust and genocide studies since it was with the approach and practice of human rights. Irving Horowitz suggested that when it narrows down to factors such as human rights genocide and violations, many researchers tend to feel that the topic "Genocide" may be unfit for any further scientific discourse (Horowitz, 1993). Sociology, as a discipline, has never been a significant element in informing people's comprehension of genocide as a concept or practice.

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Many years before actual sociological commitment to genocide studies, the Holocaust was perceived as an ideal example as some even regarded it as the only reliable example when referring to genocide. Due to this bigotry towards the Holocaust, connected scholarly emphasis on The UN Convention, a significant perception of genocide emphasizing on the issues of mass killings of specific groups under a state directive was provided. Moreover, sociologists started to significantly contribute toward genocide studies with some of the regularly cited descriptions of the term 'genocide' that are from sociological studies since the 90s; a publication of Leo Kuper's seminal text was conducted in 1981 (Waters, 2015).

Throughout several debates concerning genocide, main issues have been on various perceptions, some of which include the following: determining vulnerable groups capable of being victims of genocides and the impact of gendered genocide to a group. Regarding potential victim groups, for instance, Palmer finds out that the UN Convention's description does not include special groups such as the disabled and the LGBT community; however, such groups seemed to be targeted by the Nazi and some political groups (Palmer et al., 2000). Policies of the UN Conventions regarding Genocide tends to hinder the attempts to prevent gendered genocide since it does not seem to acknowledge the harsh experiences that women undergo during the genocide.

Aims and objectives

Aim

This research paper aims to address and seeks to answer the question of the Gendered Genocide of Aboriginal Australians. The study involved reviewing various relevant literature with the emphasis of formulating themes from the outcome to be applied later by other scholars.

Objectives

The following objectives will be achieved:

To identify various ways in which women fell victims of genocide

To determine how gender was incorporated by the perpetrators to plan and commission genocide

To highlight recommendations for future studies

Research Questions

This research's core concerns lie in evaluating the Gender, Genocide, and Indigenous Peoples: Aboriginal Australians as a case study, and specifically, in the evaluation of the Gendered Genocide and its prospects. The specific research questions guiding the study are as under:

• How did Article II of the UN Convention of 1998 transform the perception of genocide?
• What are the views of scholars, typically social scientists, regarding their definitions of gender genocide?

Methodology

The research used a qualitative method to collect relevant data. The study makes use of pertinent articles such as Article II Genocide Convention Report 1998 to retrieve more information on the topic under study. These secondary sources helped in identifying previous concepts and theories in the past, which could be relevant to the study. The study, however, showed the scarcity of relevant journals on the topic because of the least amount of studies that have previously been conducted on the Gendered Genocide.

However, the study also noted that there some committed scholars such as Raphael Lemkin, who attempted to find an all-inclusive meaning of genocide. He also formulated the phrase relatively in response to the Nazi policies of structured murder of the Jewish population at the time of the Holocaust and to also react to various instances of history that aimed at harming a specific group of people. His work was relevant during the research process.

A stratified random sampling process was employed for choosing the relevant sources of data. The method was effective because of it for the fair representation of the materials required for the study. Afterward, each document was analyzed based on its original purpose.

Literature Review

Raphael Lemkin initially defined the term "Genocide" from Poland in 1944. He formulated the phrase relatively in response to the Nazi policies of structured murder of the Jewish population at the time of the Holocaust and to also react to various instances of history that aimed at harming a specific group of people. Raphael Lemkin further advocated having genocide codified as an international crime against humanity. In the 90s, gender tended to be part of legal, academic, and activist strategies to interpret genocide due to the convergence of events (Edwards, 1981).

The United Nations General Assembly (A/RES/96-I) originally coded genocide as a crime under international law in 1946. Genocide was also recognized as an independent crime in the 1948 Genocide Convention. All states are obliged as a matter of laws based on the principle that genocide is a crime veto under international law, and no derogation is permitted, as stated by the ICJ. The description of the crime of genocide, as stipulated in Article II of the convention, was due to debating procedure and unified consent among the United Nations member states.

The definition of the term 'genocide' is stipulated under Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Based on the current Convention, genocide is referred to as "any act which is perpetrated with intent to destroying whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group (LeBlanc, 1988)." Some of those intended actions (dolus specialis) may include the following: instilling physical or mental harm to a member of a specific group; maiming and killing members of the group; intentionally causing on a group situation of life structured to physical damage it; imposing directive or policies meant to stop births within the group, and moving the children of the group in a coercive manner to another group. LeBlanc (1988), Article II of the Genocide Convention, entails a description of the crime of genocide, which involves mental elements and physical elements.

Krieken (1998) provides his own version of the definition of cultural genocide as 'the harm by a savage manner to the particular features of the targeted group.' He also demonstrated that cultural genocide was not merely forced assimilation; however, it was aiming at attaining a swift and absolute extinction of the moral, social and religious life of a specified target group of a population.

Findings

Gendered Genocide: Aboriginal Australians

Indigenous Australians are descendants from a group of individuals who had stayed in Australia and its immediate surrounding island before the introduction of European colonization. In Australia, there are two groups of Indigenous people, which include Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders. The Aboriginal Australians are connected to groups native to Australia. Legitimately, "Aboriginal Australian" is acknowledged as an individual of Torres Strait Islander or Aboriginal descent and is admitted like that in his or her society.

Gender tends to be one of the factors that tend to permeate the crime of genocide. The perpetrators get to incorporate the issues of gender when planning and to implement the intentional act, which results in genocidal violence. It is due to such gendered calamitous actions that the perpetrators apply to optimize the crime's harmful effects on the targeted groups such as Aboriginal Australians group. Moreover, the crime committed discriminatively against men, and boys have continuously been referred to as genocidal violence.

The male and female members of marked groups by the violator's own design seem to undergo genocide uniquely based on their gender. Men and boys are the focus of interest due to their gendered roles that they play in their community, such as leader, protectors of the group from external attacks, and to maintain the group's identity and household heads. On the other hand, women and girls had distinctive roles as wives, bearers of future life, family honor, and community keepers and providing labor within the homestead. The basic comprehension of the meaning and differences to being either a male or female of a specific community seemed to enable the perpetrators to enhance the conception of themselves and their target groups.

Additionally, the type of violence that was aimed at girls and women in the time of genocide was informed by the existing societal attitudes towards female members (anti-feminism), and the effects were further facilitated by the social and cultural inequalities of female members of the society. For instance, the gendered genocide could perhaps apply effectively for the Aboriginal Australians since the women were mostly target due to their gender role as the bearer of the future, and they were enticed to crossbreed with the white men.

The violators with the intent to harm a protected population tend to commit a crime with the conception of societal structures and composition of the targeted group in which the genocide is happening. Before initiating the genocide on the Aboriginal Australians, the perpetrators get to design a plant with a full understanding of the group's cultural components, such as the roles of women in the group. For instance, the male would be eliminated to ensure that they do not breed anymore. Again, the perpetrators understood the role that children play in the future, and they sought to move the children and distancing them from their identity. Gender has always played a significant role in the crime of genocide; however, it has never been evident or proven.

The comprehension of genocide as a crime committed via structured mass executions, most of the victims tend to be the male members of the target group. For instance, Aboriginal Australians male members would be targeted and killed to limit their numbers since they could be perceived as a threat and would revolutionize due to their role as protectors of the society and the group's identity; this made them be maimed and killed. Nonetheless, there has been a refusal to acknowledge the multi-faceted female encounters of genocide and those males not chosen for elimination. Instead, non-killing acts of genocide are more likely to be directed against female members of the targeted group and are occasionally deleted from the span of genocidal violence.

The crime of genocide is basically founded on the violators' view of their surroundings and the place of their victims. The understanding of a target group's social fabrics significantly informs perpetrators' view and detriment of the social, political, economic, and cultural compositions of the world around them. Nonetheless, due to an exclusive understanding of the interplay between gender and genocide, intentional acts are designed and implemented. Genocidal strategies had significantly compromised gender-specific traumas that were harmful to the victims of the group.

Genocide is described by its act of killing a member of a group. The killing is majorly occurring to men and boys. Moreover, Genocidal killing is a considerably gendered activity as men and boys killed for a varied reason to that of women and girls. In case, female members of a group are marked for genocidal execution, and the killings seem to reflect the gendered perception of the roles of women and girls in that specific community. For instance, the Aboriginal Australi...