New Books In Genocide Studies

This interview is the fourth and and final interview in a short series of podcasts about the mass violence in Indonesia.  Earlier this year I talked with Geoff Robinson, Jess Melvin and Kate McGregor and Annie Pohlman about their works. All of them have written thoughtful, carefully researched and richly detailed analyses of the violence.  Each of them shared a similar interest in the causes and nature of the violence.  While their approaches varied, each attempted to shed new light on events which have been hidden or misrepresented. Vannessa Hearman, in her new book Unmarked Graves: Death and Survival in the Anti-Communist Violence in East Java, Indonesia (NUS Press, 2018), continues this effort.  By focusing on East Java, Hearman looks at the violence from another angle, allowing us to compare how different regions descended into violence.  Reading her book together with Melvin’s offers us a fuller understanding of the relationship between high-level actors and local officials and between center and p