Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Comment on this article   Geographical studies of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and war crimes analyze the spatial dimensions of political violence as well as the social, cultural, political, and economic processes that produce and are produced by them. Such studies are largely produced by scholars from across geography's subfields but are of primary relevance to political geography, population geography and demographics, and cultural geography. These subfields constitute part of human geography, a social science drawing on its own conceptual frameworks as well as those of allied disciplines, especially anthropology, sociology, and political science. Geographical studies of conflict and political violence are a growing area of scholarship often grounded in extensive fieldwork ( Flint 2005 ). Yet geographical scholarship is often overlooked by larger disciplines, especially political science, that have failed to grasp the difference that spatial and place based concepts make in understanding the political world ( Agnew 1999 ). Furthermore, geographers are engaged in developing explanatory frameworks to address the interaction of population, territory, and conflict, for which they are also methodologically well equipped. Among these contemporary disciplinary concerns that enliven geographical work are those of scale, place(s), and social space. Each provides important insights for ... log in or subscribe to read full text