![]() | Making and Unmaking Nations: War, Leadership, and Genocide in Modern Africa Subjects: Africa Sub-Saharan -- Politics and government -- 1960–; Genocide -- Africa Sub-Saharan; Nation-building -- Africa Sub-Saharan; Political leadership -- Africa Sub-Saharan; Winner of the Grawmeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order, 2018 In Making and Unmaking Nations , Scott Straus seeks to explain why and how genocide takes place--and, perhaps more important, how it has been avoided in places where it may have seemed likely or even inevitable. To solve that puzzle, he examines postcolonial Africa, analyzing countries in which genocide occurred and where it could have but did not. Why have there not been other Rwandas? Straus finds that deep-rooted ideologies--how leaders make their nations--shape strategies of violence and are central to what leads to or away from genocide. Other critical factors include the dynamics of war, the role of restraint, and the interaction between national and local actors in the staging of campaigns of large-scale violence. Scott Straus is Professor of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda , also from Cornell, and coauthor of Intimate Enemy: Images and Voices of the Rwandan Genocide and Africa's Stalled Development: International Causes and Cures . He is coeditor most recently of The Human Rights Paradox: Universality and Its Discontents . |
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