New from the University of Pennsylvania Press:
Raphaël Lemkin and the Concept of Genocide (2016), by
Douglas Irvin-Erickson (George Mason University). A description from the Press:
Raphaël Lemkin (1900-1959) coined the word "genocide" in the winter of
1942 and led a movement in the United Nations to outlaw the crime,
setting his sights on reimagining human rights institutions and
humanitarian law after World War II. After the UN adopted the Convention
on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948,
Lemkin slipped into obscurity, and within a few short years many of the
same governments that had agreed to outlaw genocide and draft a
Universal Declaration of Human Rights tried to undermine these
principles.
This intellectual biography of one of the twentieth
century's most influential theorists and human rights figures sheds new
light on the origins of the concept and word "genocide,"
contextualizing Lemkin's intellectual development in interwar Poland and
exploring the evolving connection between his philosophical writings,
juridical works, and politics over the following decades. The book
presents Lemkin's childhood experience of anti-Jewish violence in
imperial Russia; his youthful arguments to expand the laws of war to
protect people from their own governments; his early scholarship on
Soviet criminal law and nationalities violence; his work in the 1930s to
advance a rights-based approach to international law; his efforts in
the 1940s to outlaw genocide; and his forays in the 1950s into a
social-scientific and historical study of genocide, which he left
unfinished.
Revealing what the word "genocide" meant to people in
the wake of World War II—as the USSR and Western powers sought to
undermine the Genocide Convention at the UN, while delegations from
small states and former colonies became the strongest supporters of
Lemkin's law—Raphaël Lemkin and the Concept of Genocide examines how the meaning of genocide changed over the decades and highlights the relevance of Lemkin's thought to our own time.
A few blurbs:
"An excellent intellectual biography that advances the young burgeoning
field of Lemkin (and genocide) studies in significant ways."—Dirk Moses
"Intriguing and innovative, Raphaël Lemkin and the Concept of Genocide
is a brilliant marriage of international law and philosophy. It will
make a significant contribution to the still modest field of Lemkin
studies."—David Crowe
More information is available
here.
