2009/05/05 by Bradley Campbell · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Environmental Science · Psychology · Mathematics · #Political Conflict and Governance #Wildlife Conservation and Criminology Analyses #Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence #Genocide #Social control #Criminology #Deviance (statistics) #Sociology #Ethnic Cleansing #Social psychology #Conflict theories #Social distance #Psychology #Political science #Social science #Law #Mathematics #Conflict resolution
paper · doi:10.1111/j.1467-9558.2009.01341.x
openalex publication_date 2009/05/05 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/01
Genocide is defined here as organized and unilateral mass killing on the basis of ethnicity. While some have focused on genocide as a type of deviance, most genocide is also social control—a response to behavior itself defined as deviant. As such, it can be explained as a part of a general theory of social control. Black's (1998) theories of social control explain the handling of conflicts with their social geometry—that is, with the social characteristics of those involved in the conflict. Here, Blackian theories of social control are extended to specify the social geometry of genocide as follows: genocide varies directly with immobility, cultural distance, relational distance, functional independence, and inequality; and it is greater in a downward direction than in an upward or lateral direction. This theory of genocide can be applied to numerous genocides throughout history, and it is capable of ordering much of the known variation in genocide—such as when and where it occurs, how severe it is, and who participates.