Book Review: General Politics: New Directions in Genocide Research
| Date | 01 May 2013 |
| Published date | 01 May 2013 |
| Author | Guy Lancaster |
| DOI | 10.1111/1478-9302.12016_78 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
The Oxford Handbook of National Security
Intelligence by Loch K. Johnson (ed.). Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2010. 902pp., £95.00, ISBN
9780195375886
This Handbook is a comprehensive collection of texts
from more than 50 world-renowned scholars which
will be useful to both experts and academics.The main
goal is to provide the reader with a complete under-
standing of the puzzle of national security.The means
of doing this are contentious and involve to some
extent partisan explanations of the phenomenon. A
conclusive example for this would be the fact that it
mostly analyses the challenges of the US intelligence
system.
This volume, despite being very comprehensive, is
addressed to both specialists and educated non-
specialists, aiming to ‘provide a state-of the art assess-
ment of literature ... often referred to as “strateg ic
intelligence” ’. By presenting it as a handbook, the
editor targets the book from the beginning at specialist
readers; this is not tailored to newcomers.
The editor manages to assemble a broad collection
of studies from authors with diverse backgrounds.The
chapters are well organised, following the pattern of
introduction, analysis and conclusion, the main argu-
ments being clearly emphasised. The main asset of the
book lies in the contrasting backgrounds of the con-
tributors, who bring an exhaustive amount of informa-
tion and analysis.
A shortcoming of this book is the absence of a
conclusion to the volume offering a concise summary
of the 49 articles. Although most handbooks do not
follow the same pattern as monographs, a conclusion
would have been useful to evaluate further whether the
objectives of the work had been fulfilled.
This volume is fundamental reading for academics
and professionals interested in security and intelligence
studies. The editor manages to assemble the work of
highly renowned experts which become key assets of
the work.The chapters are well chosen and seem to be
part of a continuous flow in perfect congruence, each
being introductory to the following one.This makes it
an exceptional starting point for research in the field
and it is highly recommended for academia and intel-
ligence professionals.
Andrei Alexandru Babadac
(Université Libre de Bruxelles)
New Directions in Genocide Research by Adam
Jones (ed.). Abingdon: Routledge, 2011. 312pp.,
£26.99, ISBN 9780415495974
An impressive collection, New Directions in Genocide
Research maps out interesting new research paradigms
that challenge how genocide is generally conceived and
studied. The first section, devoted to theory, breaks
down the conception of genocide as something cat-
egorically unique and instead examines it within a
broad range of social practice. Especially insightful is
Christopher Powell’s chapter on ‘genocidal moralities’,
in which he observes that ‘for genocide to take place, it
is not always the case that people’s moral sensibilities
must simply be neutralized or overpowered. Sometimes
individuals’ moral dispositions are activated and
strengthened through their involvement in genocide’
(pp. 37–8).
The second section, on themes, equally confronts
one’s preconceptions. For example, Paula Drumond
offers a critique of UN gender policies relevant to the
ongoing crisis in the Congo, noting that the UN mar-
ginalises male victims despite the documented targeted
killing of men specifically and the forced recruitment
of civilian men and boys by the militias, while Adam
Jones, whose chapter moves away from the usual state-
centric orientation of genocide studies to examine
issues of structural violence, makes a compelling case
for labelling as genocide such phenomena as global
poverty and the sanctions imposed upon Iraq in the
1990s. Finally, the third section offers a variety of rep-
resentative case studies ranging from an account of the
exterminatory war against the Tolowa Indians in
nineteenth-century California and Oregon, to a piece
providing broader ethnological context for the ongoing
violence in Darfur, one that breaks down many of the
popular media narratives regarding the situation there.
In his introductory chapter, Benjamin Lieberman
observes that studies of genocide have classically been
focused upon outcome – the attempted or successful
destruction of a group – rather than causes and goals,
which can be multiple, and therefore they have suffered
‘from a tendency to establish historical boundaries that
artificially demarcate genocide from other events’(p. 7).
This exciting volume not only serves as a corrective to
such tendencies but also, by contextualising genocide
within a range of other social practices, provides a
useful background for those studying other instances of
BOOK REVIEWS 275
© 2013 TheAuthors. Political Studies Review © 2013 Political Studies Association
Political Studies Review: 2013, 11(2)
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