Genocide as predation

Donald Black (1983) distinguishes between moralistic violence, which occurs in response to conflict, and predatory violence, which enables exploitation. Genocide, I have argued in previous work (Campbell, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013), is moralistic. It is a form of social control that occurs in response to ethnic conflicts. But as I argue here, genocide is partly predatory. The perpetrators of genocide kill in response to grievances, but they may also rob and rape their targets, take their land, or force them to labor. Pure sociological theories of social control and predation can explain both aspects of genocide. The social conditions conducive to extreme moralism and extreme predation are similar, and so the targets of genocide are treated both as enemies to be eliminated and resources to be plundered.