The Routledge International Handbook of Perpetrator Studies

Susanne C. Knittel, Zachary J. Goldberg

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351593410
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Criminal Law
• Index: Law

The Routledge International Handbook of Perpetrator Studies traces the growth of an important interdisciplinary field, its foundations, key debates and core concerns, as well as highlighting current and emerging issues and approaches and pointing to new directions for enquiry. With a focus on the perpetrators of mass killings, political violence and genocide, the handbook is concerned with a range of issues relating to the figure of the perpetrator, from questions of definition, typology, and conceptual analysis, to the study of motivations and group dynamics to questions of guilt and responsibility, as well as representation and memory politics. Offering an overview of the field, its essential concepts and approaches, this foundational volume presents contemporary perspectives on longstanding debates and recent contributions to the field that significantly expand the theoretical, temporal, political, and geographical discussion of perpetrators and their representation through literature, film, and art. It points to emerging areas and future trends in the field, thus providing scholars with ideas or encouragement for future research activity. As such, It will appeal to scholars across a range of disciplines, including sociology, anthropology, criminology, philosophy, memory studies, psychology, political science, literary studies, film studies, law, cultural studies and visual art.

Part 1

Core Concepts and Key Debates

1.1 Definitions and Terminology

1

From Perpetrators to Perpetration

Definitions, Typologies, and Processes

Uğur Ümit Üngör and Kjell Anderson

Introduction

In the past two decades, research on mass atrocities and genocides has shifted its perspective from the study of perpetrators to perpetration. Whereas the former term refers to the agency of individuals who have perpetrated forms of mass violence against civilians, the latter concept refers to the process of collective commission of mass violence. The advantage of taking a processual view is that it enables us to address the complexity of the process of perpetration: different layers of authority, different motives of involvement, different intentionality, and most importantly, the changes in these factors over time.

This shift from perpetrators to perpetration has coincided with the emergence of Perpetrator Studies as a nascent sub-discipline. Recent research ranges from anthropological and oral historical “thick description” (Hinton 2005; Jessee 2017) to sensitive micro-historical and political studies (such as Bergholz 2016; Fujii 2009; McDoom 2008; Straus 2006). We will not delve here into the possible reasons for the relative historical absence of perpetrators from genocide studies, except to say that perpetrator research can be conceptually, normatively, and empirically challenging.

This chapter surveys the state of perpetrator research in the social sciences and history by examining the definition of perpetrators, typologies of perpetrators, and the process of perpetration. We approach perpetration from three distinct analytical perspectives: top level (architects), mid-level (organizers), and bottom level (killers). Through this framework, we also delve into key debates with the field such as: What types of people become perpetrators? Are individual perpetrators pathological, or are they shaped by their social context? Is perpetration driven by hate, economic factors, or obedience to authority?

Contemporary research emphasizes the complexity, fluidity, and contingency of perpetration. This has important implications for the ways in which we define perpetrators and approach perpetrator research.

Defining the “Perpetrator”

For our purposes, a perpetrator can be defined as any individual who contributes directly and substantially to genocide (or other mass atrocities). While this definition is informed by substantive international criminal law concepts of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes (such as those found in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court 1998), we choose not to be strictly limited by legal taxonomies. Genocide, as defined in the Genocide Convention and Rome Statute, emphasizes that perpetrators must have specific intent, the intent to destroy the group, yet many of those who contribute directly to genocide may lack this intention (Anderson 2018, 238–243).

International legal definitions are largely the product of treaty negotiations between states, thus these definitions are shaped by political compromise. Ethnic, racial, religious, and national groups are included in the Genocide Convention, ostensibly because they are “permanent and stable,” yet it is debatable that any of these groups is permanent or stable. Furthermore, there is often a divergence between socio-historical and legalistic concepts of perpetrators, as lawyers undertake the categorization of perpetrators according to the logic and boundaries of criminal law, while social scientists and historians often favor broader interpretations that encompass all socially similar cases, as defined by the researcher and the research objectives.

Our definition also goes beyond direct perpetrators to encompass categories of complicity (those who substantially contribute to atrocities) while still excluding notions of “collective responsibility.”¹ In defining perpetrators, we must also consider that perpetrators perform diverse acts with diverse motivations. High-level perpetrators, such as leaders, often do not “get their hands dirty” through direct perpetration. Accordingly, one might expect different considerations to apply to indirect perpetration (i.e., planning or ordering atrocities). Moreover, different forms of mass atrocities involve different types of perpetration and perpetrators. Perpetrators of genocide, for example, can range from Nazi bureaucrats to Rwandan farmers to (arguably) teachers in Canadian residential schools. The farther one gets from killing, the less likely individuals are to self-identify, or be characterized by others, as perpetrators.

Bearing this diversity in mind, we will focus herein on perpetrators who directly and substantially contribute to mass killing. Our point of departure is that perpetrators remain a vital category for social, legal, and historical analysis. The emergence of Perpetrator Studies has rightfully challenged static views of “the perpetrator” as being a social category with fixed boundaries, yet it would be equally misleading to study genocide or mass atrocities without differentiating between the agents of genocide and their victims. Who are the perpetrators, and how and why do they perpetrate?

Who Are the Perpetrators?

Genocide and mass atrocities involve, by their very nature, atrocious behavior. In a narrow sense, genocide only requires killing, the prevention of births, or other acts that directly effectuate the crime. Yet, perpetrators often go beyond mere killing to act with entrepreneurial cruelty: their victims are humiliated, dehumanized, and tormented as part of the destruction of the victim group. This “excessive” violence is not incidental to the crime of genocide; rather, it arises from its very nature as a crime involving the destruction of an ethnic, religious, national, or racial group. Such a far-reaching social project requires ideological justification: the victims must be destroyed because of who they are, their fundamental essence. What kinds of people perpetrate these acts of extreme cruelty?

The idea that criminals are different from “ordinary” people goes back to Cesare Lombroso and the roots of criminology (1891). Criminologists have advanced a broad range of explanations for criminal behavior, which, broadly speaking, can be grouped into theories positing that criminal behavior is inborn (nature), and theories arguing that criminal behavior is learned (nurture). Many contemporary theories of crime combine these two paradigmatic perspectives in nuanced ways to show that some individuals may have inborn characteristics that predispose them to criminal behavior, but that most individuals will not become criminals without an element of socialization (Wikström 2004). Yet, it is questionable how well these traditional criminological explanations relate to genocide, where perpetration is systematic, politicized, and generally endorsed by legitimate authorities. The nature of genocide as a state crime challenges many criminological presumptions, which assume that crimes and criminal behavior are deviant acts, thus that the perpetrators themselves are deviant.

This apparent paradox of genocide perpetrators as non-deviant criminals is a thread running through Perpetrator Studies. While popular perceptions and representations of perpetrators are often villainous caricatures, researchers have long grappled with the seeming ordinariness of perpetrators. At the Nuremberg Tribunals, two men were tasked with psychological examinations of the accused: psychologist Gustave Gilbert and psychiatrist Douglas Kelley. While both Gilbert and Kelley concluded that the defendants were psychologically fit for trial, they reached quite different conclusions regarding the psychological bases for their acts. In interpreting the same set of Rorschach Tests, Gilbert classified all the defendants as psychopathic personality types: schizoid, narcissistic, and paranoid (Joyce 2009, 18). He argued that the defendants were raised in a kind of pathological German culture, emphasizing blind obedience to authority (a theme that was later picked up by Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, and Sanford in their book The Authoritarian Personality 1950). Kelley, on the other hand, emphasized the ordinariness of the Nuremberg defendants; he argued that authoritarian governments and genocide were possible even in the United States, because genocide was neither cultural nor a result of insane leaders; rather, it was a social phenomenon.

In the long run, Kelley’s view seems to have predominated, not only in the case of the Nuremberg defendants, but also in Perpetrator Studies more generally (see, for example, Zillmer et al. 1989). Hannah Arendt, in her touchstone analysis of the trial of Nazi bureaucrat Adolf Eichmann, wrote of “the banality of evil” when reflecting on Eichmann’s apparent lack of individual pathology or ideological commitment (Arendt [1963] 2006). Similarly, Christopher Browning concluded, in his study of the Holocaust perpetrators in Reserve Police Battalion 101, that most perpetrators were “ordinary men” (Browning 1998, a view that was contradicted in Daniel Goldhagen’s controversial book Hitler’s Willing Executioners, 2001).

More recent studies of perpetrators tend to eschew the ordinary/pathological dichotomy to emphasize the multidimensionality of perpetrators and perpetration. They argue, as we do here, that there is no single paradigmatic genocide perpetrator. Rather, perpetrators perpetrate for a variety of reasons, and their acts of perpetration are often contingent rather than rooted in enduring circumstances or personal characteristics. Social psychological experiments, such as the Stanford Prison Experiment, further reinforce the conclusion that “power of the situation” is more important than the pathology of individuals (Zimbardo 2007).

As an outgrowth of this recognition of the variability of perpetrator motivations, researchers have sought to develop typologies of perpetrators. Rather than identifying paradigmatic general perpetrator characteristics, these typologies group perpetrators according to characteristics and motivations.

These tend to focus on the motives and motivations of perpetrators, including, for instance, economic gain, ideological commitment, sadism, conformism, or fear. As an example, sociologist Michael Mann’s typology includes:

1. Ideological killers [who believe in the “righteousness of murderous cleansing”]
2. Bigoted killers [who “share the prejudices of their social environment”]
3. Violent killers [who “experience violence as a release”]
4. Fearful killers [who kill out of fear]
5. Careerist killers [who work for organizations involved in atrocities and participate to further their career interests]
6. Materialist killers [who are motivated by economic gain]
7. Disciplined killers [who kill to conform with directives]
8. Comradely killers [who kill to conform with their peer group]
9. Bureaucratic killers [who are situated within bureaucracies and motivated by “habitual obedience”]

(Mann 2005)

Mann’s distinction here between ideological and bigoted killers (types one and two) is interesting, distinguishing in some sense between those motivated by “high” or “low” ideology. Smeulers takes a similar overall approach, while also emphasizing the importance of leaders (criminal masterminds) as a distinct category (2008). Genocide and crimes against humanity are atrocity crimes, yet it is important to remember that other kinds of crimes may also involve leaders and followers, some of whom may be predisposed to lead violence, and others who follow out of a sense of duty or coercion. McDevit, Levin, and Bennett’s typology of hate crime perpetrators (2002), for example, also includes “leaders” (who initiate violence), “fellow travelers” (who go along with violence), and “unwilling participants” (who may be passively involved in violence yet do nothing to stop it). Interestingly, their typology also includes “heroes” (what genocide scholars might term “rescuers”), illustrating the need for typologies to also consider the relationships between perpetrators and other actors.

Despite these common conceptions of “types” of perpetrators, there is still a relative lack of research into how perpetrators come to exhibit the various distinguishing characteristics. Are individual dispositions inborn? Alternatively, if they are a product of an individual’s experience and socialization, what factors produce each type of perpetrator? Smeulers approaches this issue by arguing that pre-perpetration types also influence types during perpetration. For example, “law-abiding citizens” may become “conformist” perpetrators, while borderline types (those who are marginalized but not criminals) may be “profiteers,” and “criminals” (those with a record of violence) may become “sadist” perpetrators during mass atrocities. Further research is certainly needed in this a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Contributors
• Foreword: Critical Perpetrator Studies
• Introduction
• PART 1: Core Concepts and Key Debates
• PART 2: Intersections
• Index