Beginning on April 6, 1994, the Rwandan genocide lasted nearly 100 days leaving an estimated 500,000-1,000,000 dead.  While the campaign to exterminate the Tutsi-minority was led by Hutu extremists, it would be a mistake to hold a single group responsible for this mass atrocity.  Comparative studies of other conflicts show that it would also be a mistake to consider genocide an anomaly.

While we often see the conflict as a clash of racial or ethnic groups, the cycle of violence is often part of larger structural forces that form political identities through privileged rule.

• Mahmood Mamdani.  2001.  When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda.  Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Sexual and racialized violence are some of the most well-known parts of genocide, but conflicts over property and the political construction of difference are also elements which occur earlier and may act as warning signs.

• John Hagan and Wenona Rymond-Richmond. 2009. Darfur and the Crime of Genocide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Comparative studies of atrocities in other contexts can also show how societies remember suffering.

•  Robyn Autry. 2010. “Memory, Materiality, and the Apartheid Past.” Contexts 9(3): 46-51
•  Barbara Sutton. 2010. “Situating Memory in Argentina.” Contexts 9(3): 52-57

For further reading, check out this TSP feature on The Crime of Genocide.

Last month Comcast announced its plans to merge with Time Warner Cable, and internet subscribers may have to choose Comcast as their broadband provider even if they don’t want cable in the near future. With rising cable rates, the merger is stoking fears and outrage among the public, and politicians like Senator Al Franken. The deal has yet to be finalized and the FCC may instruct Comcast and Time-Warner to pump their brakes before merging.  If the deal succeeds, however, the nation’s two largest cable and broadband providers are sure to become a behemoth on the information superhighway.

While profit is a big motive for acquisitions and takeovers, companies also try to take over close members of their social networks to reduce competition. Monopolies and oligopolies are especially likely in industries with only a few major players and close ties.

• Donald Palmer, Xueguang Zhou, Brad M. Barber, and Yasemin Soysal. 1995. “The Friendly and Predatory Acquisition of Large U.S. Corporations in the 1960s: The Other Contested Terrain,” American Sociological Review 60(4): 469-499.
• Marshall Barron Clinard, Peter C. Yeager, and Ruth Blackburn Clinard. 1980. Corporate Crime. New York: Free Press

What does this mean for women, people of color, and low income communities? Rising prices for internet access would expand an already-large “digital divide” in who can use the web and who gets represented on it.

• Eszter Hargittai. 2004. “Internet Access and Use in Context.”  New Media Society 6(1): 137-143.

Also, check out Eszter Hargittai’s “Office Hours” interview where she discusses the expanding gaps and inequalities in the level of internet skills possessed by so-called “digital natives.”

After going years without an adequate form of gender recognition, Facebook users whose identities do not fit neatly into female-male binaries now have the option of selecting one of 50 options, including “androgynous,” “transgender,” “intersex” and “fluid.”  With an estimated 700,000 individuals in the US who identify as transgender, Facebook hopes that the expanded categories will help validate the gender identities of at least some of its users.

However, there is disagreement about the use of this kind of self-identification. Some seek broader public recognition while others view gender identification as futile.

• Katrina Roen. 2002. ““Either/Or” and “Both/Neither”: Discursive Tensions in Transgender Politics.” Signs 27(2):501-22.

Labeling categories of gender and sexual orientation may promote a “politics of containment” where society starts to decide who is and is not an “acceptable queer.”

• Ana Cristina Santos. 2013.  “Are we there yet? Queer sexual encounters, legal recognition and homonormativity.” Journal of Gender Studies. 22(1): 54-64.

On the other hand, by providing alternative options for gender identification state agencies and community-based service providers can expand access to services for people in poverty.

• Dean Spade. 2006. “Compliance Is Gendered: Struggling for Gender Self-Determination in a Hostile Economy” in Transgender Rights edited by Paisley Currah, Richard M. Juang, and Shannon Price Minter. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

For more on the recognition of gender categories on Facebook and beyond, check out these recent pieces from Cyborgology and Contexts.

Despite all the news about an icy “polar vortex” currently gripping the United States, debates over climate change were quite heated at the United Nations Climate Summit.  In a recent interview addressing the protests at this year’s conference, Greenpeace Executive Director, Kumi Naidoo said, “Our message to our political leaders is that nature does not negotiate…You can’t change the science — we have to change political will.”  Recent figures indicate that greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere are at an all-time high, and The World Meteorological Organization projects greenhouse gas emissions will be 12 billion tons higher in 2020.  Such an increase will likely result in a temperature rise of more than 2 degrees Celsius.  As greenhouse gas emissions rise, so are anxieties among many social scientists.

Sociological research suggests that the culture of organizations within the environmental movement itself is responsible for the lack of traction on addressing climate change.

• Brulle, Robert and Jenkins, J. C.  2008, Spring. “Fixing the Bungled U.S. Environmental Movement.” Contexts. 7: 14-19.

Which countries are more likely to take a seat at the negotiating table? The following study offers some predictions based on a macro-level analysis of global inequalities between rich and poor countries.

• Roberts, J. T. 1996.  “Predicting Participation in Environmental Treaties: A World-System Analysis.” Sociological Inquiry. 66(1): 38-57.

Shopping while black is not a crime, but what happens when a store assumes the customer is always white?

ColorofChange.org has created a petition urging the NYPD to conduct a full investigation into over 50 arrests of young people, predominantly of color, outside of major department stores like Barney’s and Macy’s. Why hasn’t the “shop and frisk” trend gone out of style?  Theories on race and racism, as well as the application of such ideas through social experiments, may offer some useful insights.

To study the gap between actions and rhetoric, audit studies reveal patterns of discrimination in the working world which shape employment opportunities for many low-wage workers of color.

• Pager, Devah and Lincoln Quillian. 2005.  “Walking the Talk? What Employers Say Versus What They Do.” American Sociological Review. 70: 355-80.

• Pager, Devah, Bruce Western, Bart Bonikowski.  2009.  “Discrimination in a Low-Wage Labor Market: A Field Experiment.”  American Sociological Review.  79: 777-99.

Some theorists view racial attitudes through a conflict perspective that suggests racism and prejudice is rooted in different social positions between groups.

• Bobo, Lawrence. 1999.  “Prejudice as Group Position: Microfoundations of a Sociological Approach to Racism and Race Relations.”  Journal of Social Issues.  55(3): 445-72.