Legal definitions of targeted groups may reinforce the very reifications that enabled genocide.

Evidence

Stuart Hall (1985, 1988) has argued that cultural identity is “not an essence but a positioning,” a complex, contradictory, and shifting arena in which racial and ethnic categories become both the dominant way that hegemony and exploitation are experienced, and sites of hybridization and resistance (see also Lowe, 1996). By treating “a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” as a real, bounded, and stable natural entity, do scholars and prosecutors of genocide run the risk of reinforcing the hegemonic reifications that were used in catalyzing and attempting to legitimate genocide? — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 267 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Strict legal definitions of genocide disempower the communities they are meant to protect — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 289; Treating ethnic groups as stable natural entities may reinforce the reifications that enable genocide — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 267; Genocide targets a category, so victims must first be abstracted. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 646 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Treating ethnic groups as stable natural entities may reinforce the reifications that enable genocide #expands (0.92) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 267