Abstract

GARCIA-ARBOLEDA, Juan Felipe. GENOCIDE AS A DISPUTED NAME: THE METHODOLOGICAL TENSION BETWEEN LAW AND ANTHOROPOLOGY. Int. Law: Rev. Colomb. Derecho Int. [online]. 2010, n.17, pp.411-446. ISSN 1692-8156.

This paper is a product of the research group on Social Justice, Faculty of Law of the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. The goal of this paper is to describe a methodological tension between legal and anthropological disciplines. The tension is developed in scenarios in which are implemented transitional justice mechanisms, and consists in the different ways to determinate if certain practices of violence are or not genocide. The text explores works that illustrate this tension, and then outlines the method and the results of a field research with paramilitaries' victims in department of Magdalena, Colombia. The text concludes that it is appropriate for the analysis of the issue of genocide, to take consciousness about the tension between what legal institutions can name as genocide and what the victims claim to be named in that sense. To forget that tension could contribute to cover violence practices, and to increase the possibilities of their repetition.

Keywords : Genocide; Raphael Lemkin; Anthropology of Genocide; Victims; Act 975/2005; Colombia; Law 975 of 2005 (July 25); Trials (Genocide); Criminal Anthropology.

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