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Podcast: New Books in Genocide Studies
Episode: Benjamin Lieberman, “Remaking Identities: God, Nation and Race in World History” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2013)
Description: What do you say to someone who suggests that genocide is not just destructive, but constructive?
This is the basic theme of Benjamin Lieberman‘s excellent new book Remaking Identities: God, Nation and Race in World History (Rowman and Littlefield, 2013). The book surveys two thousand years of history to explain how people have used violence to reconstruct identities. This obviously involves death and destruction. But it also involves recasting the identities of survivors. It involves evangelism and religious conversion. It entails education and persuasion. It sometimes requires forced separation from one’s community and integration into a new community...