Ukraine and the Problems of Genocide
6 hour course by Martin Shaw (IBEI-University of Sussex)
- Schedule: 28 & 29 June 2023 (10:00–13:00)
This course will discuss discourses of genocide in the Ukraine War and their connections to current academic debates on genocide, focusing on the arguments of Dirk Moses’ 2021 book The Problems of Genocide.
The first session will examine the role of Russian genocide claims in the justification of their aggression, the claims of Ukrainians and their supporters about Putin’s genocidal ideology, legal arguments on the inapplicability of genocide, and the scope of coherent social-scientific genocide analysis in the conflict. In so doing, the session will explore fundamental questions of genocide in a preliminary way, leading in the second session to a focused discussion on Moses’ argument that the genocide concept needs to be replaced by that of ‘permanent security’, including how well this stands up in the light of Ukraine. In addition to Moses’ book, the course will focus on Professor Shaw’s article on Ukraine (currently open access from the Journal of Genocide Research) and his unpublished paper on Moses’ book which will be made available to participants.
Martin Shaw is Research Professor at IBEI and Emeritus Professor of Sussex University, UK. He is the author of War and Genocide, What is Genocide, Genocide in International Relations and has recently published “Russia’s Genocidal War in Ukraine: Radicalization and Social Destruction”, which is openly available online from the Journal of Genocide Research.
