Üngör, Uğur Ümit and Kjell Anderson. “From Perpetrators to Perpetration: Definitions, Typologies, and Processes.” (2020)

This chapter by Uğur Ümit Üngör and Kjell Anderson gives an overview of a contemporary turn in the field of Perpetrator Studies. Rather than a totalising approach of examining perpetrators of mass violence, Üngör and Anderson describe a shift in scholarship toward examining the processes of perpetration, and how these processes are multi-tiered and dynamic. They do not discredit the category of the perpetrator as a necessary element of legal and historical analysis but rather aim to create a broad and differentiated understanding of how perpetration is carried out.

Üngör and Anderson explain that criminological analyses of perpetration are insufficient, as they rely on psychological arguments about nature and nurture in order to predict a propensity towards the ‘entrepreneurial cruelty’ of genocide and mass atrocity. The authors problematise these psychological arguments around perpetration by calling attention to how some psychologists examining the accused at the Nuremberg Trials “emphasized the ordinariness of the Nuremberg defendants” (9). This view of the perpetration of mass violence as a social phenomenon calls attention to the multidimensionality of perpetration, and the potential motivators that drive ordinary men to kill.

Üngör and Anderson describe the methods of typology currently in use for categorising perpetrators, such as Michael Mann’s typology of killers, and McDevit, Levin, and Bennett’s typology of hate crime perpetrators. Even with these models, however, Üngör and Anderson see a lack in critical engagement with the idea of perpetration. They note that these models do not take into account the potential intersectionality of subjects in more than one category, nor the ‘pathways’ that lead actors to perpetration. To bridge this gap in scholarship, the authors discuss macro-, meso-, and micro-level perpetration processes, as a more dynamic frame for understanding the circumstances that lead to different levels of engagement with mass violence.

Macro-level processes of perpetration focus on the so-called ‘architects’ of mass violence, or the symbolic leaders of violent movements—key examples being Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and others. While there is already a wealth of scholarship on this level of perpetration, it is still important, as it reveals “how the political elite has been able to wield the state’s apparatus(es) of coercion” (11), as well as the extreme ideologies which fuel these projects of violence. Üngör and Anderson note that more research is needed into the decision-making process at this level, as well as into the role of the macro-level in the move from a pre-genocidal phase to a genocidal phase.

Meso-level processes of perpetration, focusing on the organisers of mass violence, is the most underdeveloped of the three subcategories with regards to scholarship. These processes concern the “mid-level political and administrative elites”, “internal agencies”, and “(para-)military bosses” who keep the mechanisms of mass violence running (14). Üngör and Anderson describe some of the main functions and conflicts present in this level of perpetration: meso-level perpetrators concern themselves with the practical organisation of both military and paramilitary actors and the tensions between them, as well as regional variations in mass violence as a result of shifting local power structures.

Studies of micro-level perpetration often deal with situational motivations, with fear playing a larger factor than ideological politics. This subject position of perpetration, which is associated with the act of killing, is examined as a question of how individual interests and actions relate to the collective policies of political extremisms. Studies in this field make clear, according to Üngör and Anderson, the simultaneous processes of “the desensitisation of the perpetrators and the dehumanisation of the victims by the perpetrators” (18).

Üngör and Anderson’s intervention in Perpetrator Studies marks an important shift in how we investigate projects of mass violence. This intervention allows for a more dynamic, fluid understanding than images of the ‘extraordinary perpetrator,’ and will be of interest to any scholar who wants to investigate the motives and pathways to perpetration without falling into a totalising narrative of perpetrators as arbiters of pure evil.

Submitted by Flora Lehmann

Üngör, Uğur Ümit and Kjell Anderson. “From Perpetrators to Perpetration: Definitions, Typologies, and Processes.” In The Routledge International Handbook of Perpetrator Studies. Knittel, Susanne C, and Zachary J Goldberg, eds. 2020. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, pp. 7-22.