Call for Papers for the Dossier: “Anthropology in the face of the unspeakable: displacements, asylum, and genocides”

Coined by Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin (1900-1959), the term genocide first appeared in his book Axis rule in occupied Europe: laws of occupation, analysis of government, proposals for redress, published in 1944 (Lemkin, 2008). It was an attempt to legally classify the extermination of Jews by the German Nazis. Four years later, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defined genocide as a crime against international law, obliging states to prevent and punish it. According to this treaty, genocide is characterized by the intention to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group through the following acts: killing members of the group; serious harm to the physical or mental integrity of members of the group; intentionally subjecting the group to conditions of existence that cause its total or partial physical destruction; measures intended to prevent births within the group; forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Although the word genocide emerged in this context, its existence predates it, as Clastres (2014) reminds us. In this sense, the actions perpetrated by European colonial empires in the 19th century, which decimated indigenous populations in Africa, Asia, and the Americas, perpetuating “an era of darkness, colonial wars, forced labor, concentration camps, genocide, forced migration, famine, and disease,” are exemplary (Davis, 2022, p. 131). Similarly, if we go back even further, we arrive at the period of the “discoveries,” when millions of indigenous people living here were massacred. In fact, from Iberian colonization to the present day, violence against indigenous peoples has founded and structured Brazilian society (Tuxá, 2021). Nevertheless, during the Bolsonaro administration, the meanings of the category of genocide were disputed in Brazil on at least two occasions: in 2019, when the then president was formally accused of genocide against indigenous peoples at the International Criminal Court, and in 2021, during discussions on the final report of the Covid-19 Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry in the Senate.

In fact, it appears that the meanings attributed to genocide, as well as the type of event and/or action (or omission) that will be classified as such, vary contextually. The atrocities committed by Germany in Namibia between 1904 and 1908 have recently begun to be considered genocide by historians. Four decades before the murders of Jews, the Germans built concentration camps and carried out “scientific” experiments to torture and kill more than 70,000 people, especially from the Herero and Nama peoples, who had rebelled against the expropriation of their lands by the colonizers (Krachenski, 2016). Even before the outbreak of World War II, between 1915 and 1918, that is, during World War I, the so-called “Armenian genocide” took place, in which 1.5 million Armenians were murdered by the Ottoman government; those who survived were deported en masse (Summa, 2007).

Deportations, displacements, whether explicitly forced or not, and exiles, in fact, seem to be one of the many consequences of different forms of violence that can be classified as genocide. In this sense, the “era of genocide” coincides with imperialist expansion (Luxemburg, 1984) and with the “century of camps” (Agier, 2020). It was in the 20th century that discourses and practices of surveillance and control of undesirables emerged, that is, stateless persons, immigrants, and refugees who left their countries of origin for countless reasons, including the fact that their lands were expropriated and they were victims of genocide. When crossing state borders, this population—often subject to racialization mechanisms (Carneiro, 2023)—is kept in specific spaces, such as transit centers, waiting areas, spaces self-organized by refugees, rural settlements, and refugee camps (Agier, 2020; Mbembe, 2020).

The history of Palestine encapsulates all these dimensions. The first Jewish settlers moved to Palestine in the late 19th century, when “they already imagined a Palestine without Palestinians and openly discussed how to achieve this” (Pappe, 2025, p. 20). Since then, Palestinians have lived under settler colonialism, being subjugated and expelled from their own lands. After the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, many sought asylum in the Gaza Strip. Thus, the ethnic cleansing we are witnessing on a daily basis did not begin in 2023 (Caramuru, 2024; Pappe, 2025), although not all states are willing to admit that we are facing genocide.

From this perspective, this dossier aims to bring together works that reflect on the polysemic character of the category of genocide, applied in different historical, social, and ethnographic contexts. We especially welcome research that links events/actions classified as genocidal with processes of internal and transnational displacement, as well as with the trajectories, experiences, memories, and resistance strategies of individuals and groups who are victims of genocide. We also invite reflections on conducting research in scenarios of such extreme violence. Following Veena Das' proposal, the objective of this dossier is to contribute to the public role of anthropology: presenting evidence in order to combat “official amnesia and systematic acts of making evidence disappear” and, at the same time, “witnessing the descent into everyday life through which victims and survivors affirm the possibility of life by removing it from the circulation of words that have become savage—giving words a home, so to speak” (Das 2020, p. 292).

References

AGIER, Michel. Managing the undesirables: refugee camps and humanitarian government. Cambridge: Polity, 2020.

CARAMURU, Bárbara. Palestina: manual de ocupação. Bauru: Canal 6 Editora, 2024.

CARNEIRO, Sueli. Dispositivo de racialidade: a construção do outro como não ser como fundamento do ser. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 2023.

CLASTRES, Pierre. Do etnocídio. In: CLASTRES, Pierre. Arqueologia da violência – pesquisas de antropologia política. 3. ed. São Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2014. p. 75-89.

DAS, Veena. Vida e palavras: a violência e sua descida ao ordinário. São Paulo: Editora Unifesp, 2020.

DAVIS, Mike. Holocaustos coloniais: a criação do Terceiro Mundo. São Paulo: Veneta, 2022.

KRACHENSKI, Naiara. As colônias alemãs perdidas na África. São Paulo: Prismas, 2016.

LEMKIN, Raphael. Axis rule in occupied Europe: laws of occupation, analysis of government, proposals for redress. New Jersey: Lawbook Exchange, 2008.

LUXEMBURG, Rosa. A acumulação do capital: contribuição ao estudo econômico do imperialismo, v. 2. São Paulo: Abril Cultural, 1984.

MBEMBE, Achille. Políticas da inimizade. São Paulo: N-1 edições, 2020.

PAPPE, Ilan. Brevíssima história do conflito Israel-Palestina. São Paulo: Elefante, 2025.

SUMMA, Renata de Figueiredo. Vozes armênias: memórias de um genocídio. Revista Ética e Filosofia Política, Juiz de Fora, v. 10, n. 1, jun. 2007.

TUXÁ, Felipe. Negacionismo histórico e genocídio indígena no Brasil. In: ZELIC, Marcelo; ZEMA, Ana Catarina; MOREIRA, Elaine Moreira (org.). Genocídio indígena e políticas integracionistas: demarcando a escrita no campo da memória. São Paulo: Instituto de Políticas Relacionais, 2021. p. 22-33.

 

Considering the evaluation criteria imposed on scientific journals, 50% of articles may be selected from doctoral students, while the remaining articles must be authored by at least one PhD holder. All submitted articles will be blind reviewed by external reviewers, in accordance with the journal's policy. In order to account for the diversity of theoretical and methodological approaches in the different empirical fields and issues to be discussed, articles from the areas of Anthropology and Social Sciences will be given preference, observing the parameters of exogeneity in relation to UFF.

Organizers: Andréa Lobo (UnB) and Gabriel Tardelli (UnB).

Deadline: April 19, 2026.

NOTE: As we have more than one open call, it is mandatory to indicate in the “Comments to the editors” field that the submission is for the Dossier “Displacements, Asylum, and Genocides.”

Contributions can be sent until April 19, 2026, through the journal's electronic system: https://periodicos.uff.br/antropolitica/about/submissions#onlineSubmissions