Genocide and Mass Violence: Memory, Symptom, and Recovery

What are the legacies of genocide and mass violence for individuals and the social worlds in which they live, and what are the local processes of recovery? Genocide and Mass Violence aims to examine, from a cross-cultural perspective, the effects of mass trauma on multiple levels of a group or society and the recovery processes and sources of resilience. How do particular individuals recall the trauma? How do ongoing reconciliation processes and collective representations of the trauma impact the group? How does the trauma persist in “symptoms”? How are the effects of trauma transmitted across generations in memories, rituals, symptoms, and interpersonal processes? What are local healing resources that aid recovery? To address these issues, this book brings into conversation psychological and medical anthropologists, psychiatrists, psychologists, and historians. The theoretical implications of the chapters are examined in detail using several analytic frameworks.

Devon E. Hinton, MD, PhD, is an anthropologist and psychiatrist and an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. His work has focused on culturally specific presentations of anxiety disorders, particularly trauma-related disorder, and culturally sensitive treatment of those disorders. He is the first author of more than 100 articles and chapters. He is the co-editor of four volumes, two with Byron Good: Culture and Panic Disorder and Culture and PTSD. He was a member of the DSM-5 cultural study group, as well as an advisor to the anxiety, OC, posttraumatic, and dissociative disorders work group of DSM-5 (American Psychiatric Association). He is the director of a trauma refugee clinic for Southeast Asian refugees in Lowell, MA.

Alexander L. Hinton, PhD, is Director of the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights, Professor of Anthropology and UNESCO Chair in Genocide Prevention at Rutgers University. He is the author of the award-winning Why Did They Kill? Cambodia in the Shadow of Genocide and nine edited or co-edited collections. In recognition of his work on genocide, the American Anthropological Association selected him as the recipient of the 2009 Robert B. Textor and Family Prize for Excellence in Anticipatory Anthropology. He is also the immediate past President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars (2011–13) and was a Member/Visitor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton (2011–13). He has been invited around the globe to lecture on genocide and mass violence.