In 1994 Rwanda erupted into one of the most appalling cases of genocide that the world had witnessed since World War II. Since genocide is the most aberrant of human behaviors, it cries out for explanation. This article offers an analysis and explanation of the Rwandan genocide utilizing the human materialism paradigm. It addresses the material, demographic, social and ideological elements of the problem.
1994 Rwanda erupted into one of the most appalling cases of genocide that the world had witnessed since World War II. Since genocide is the most aberrant ofhwnan behaviors, it cries out for explanation. Why did it occur? In this article I offer an analysis and explanation utilizing the human materialism paradigm. A detailed explanation ofthis paradigm is contained in a book carrying its name (Magnarella, 1993). Here, I offer only a brief sketch ofit.
Human materialism is a systematic paradigm designed to bridge the gap between scientific and humanistic approaches to understanding hwnan behavior, culture, and society. It conceptualizes humans as rational, cost-benefit calculating, scheming, emotional, loving and hating, social creatures who are indoctrinated to some degree in ideological, ritual and symbolic systems that influence their thought, behavior and perceptions oftheir natural and sociocultural environments. Even though human materialism eschews simplistic, reductionistic characteristics of hwnan nature, it still manages to offer a framework or research strategy for investigating human sociocultural systems and generating hypotheses and theories that facilitate understanding, explanation, and prediction.
The hwnan materialist paradigm offers both an abstract model of sociocultural systems and a research strategy. It combines in a unique and fruitful way a number of established theoretical perspectives. One of its major strengths and innovations is its blending of infrastructural causality with human teleology. That is, it places human behavior within itseffective environmental context and also focuses significantly on human thought, especially the plans, strategies, and agendas of societal leaders. The paradigm analytically divides sociocultural systems into three major interfacing components--infrastructure, social structure, and superstructure--and suggests, for the purpose of hypothesis formation, a sequence of causal relationships.
Infrastructure is not purely material; it is divided into material, human and social infrastructural components, and under certain conditions stresses indoctrination and ideology as major causal forces. Social infrastructure includes the effective ownership and control of the forces of production. It consists of the persons in and positions of economic and political power. Such persons are somewhat like orchestra leaders directing available musical resources. By including the persons in positions of power as well as the structural positions they occupy, human materialism assumes that the personality characteristics of powerful individuals must be taken into account. Decisions by elites are not the exclusive result o f their structural positions and environmental pressures. Although the model assumes mutual causality within, between and among the three major components, it hypothesizes that the direction of the more powerful causal forces go from infrastructure to social structure to superstructure.