Defining genocide required treating racial groups as bounded and stable

Evidence

Lemkin (1944:79) sought to embed the notion of a bounded and clearly defined group deeply in the term itself through use of the Greek genos (race, tribe). Indeed, one of the arguments that bolstered efforts to exclude “political groups” from the UN Convention was that “racial or national groups” - being distinct, stable, bounded communities — could provide a scientific and objective basis for defining genocide (see Kuper, 1981:25). Benedict Anderson ( 1991) and others have argued, however, that national identities are “imagined,” not primordial, and that they are part of modernist political projects. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 265

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies how the UN genocide definition anchored itself in a false primordialism — useful counterpoint to constructivist racialization definitions elsewhere in the vault.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 265