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Description:

This panel invites renewed engagement with the spatial politics of genocide. Scholars have recently made a number of forays into the mainstream press to grapple with a perennial question: which violence constitutes genocide, and under what circumstances? (Feldman 2023, Kinstler, 2024). “Genocide”, as these theorists note, is hardly a neutral description of mass violence, but one mediated through highly particular legal parameters. Geographers, likewise, argue that the spatial dimensions of mass atrocity play an integral role in debates about when–or even if–mass violence assumes the legal mantle of genocide (Oglesby and Ross, 2009; Carmalt 2019).

As debates about what counts as “genocide” continue to unfold, geographic scholarship is poised to make unique contributions. In that spirit, this proposed AAG ‘25 paper session welcomes scholarship on “genocide” that broaches the complex intertwining of the term’s legal and spatial dimensions. We look forward to papers focusing on empirical cases of mass atrocity in the their legal complexity, the spatio-legal construction of tribunals, as well as any other venue in which the intertwined legal are spatial politics of genocide are sensitively addressed.

If interested, please send an abstract by Oct 25 to Max Counter (countema@gvsu.edu) and Jean Carmalt (jcarmalt@jj.cuny.edu)

Citations

Carmalt, Jean Connolly. “Critical Geographies of Human Rights and the Spatial Dimensions of International Law Violations in Rakhine State, Myanmar.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers 109, no. 6 (November 2, 2019): 1829–44. https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2019.1570839.

Feldman, N. The word genocide has an actual meaning. The Atlantic. (2023, November 15). https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/11/israel-gaza-war-humanitarian-law-concepts/675996/

Kinstler, L. The bitter fight over the meaning of ‘genocide.’ The New York Times Magazine. (2024, August 20). https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/20/magazine/genocide-definition.html

Oglesby, Elizabeth, and Amy Ross. “Guatemala’s Genocide Determination and the Spatial Politics of Justice.” Space and Polity 13, no. 1 (April 2009): 21–39. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562570902780910.

Non-Presenting Participants