This article surveys risk factors for genocide and genocide prevention from
the perspectives of four social science disciplines: sociology, social psychology, political
science, and economics. Each discipline brings a valuable set of concepts and tools to
bear in genocide research. Moreover, fruitful multi- and inter-disciplinary collaboration
across the four disciplines (and other fields) is shedding new insights into why genocide
has have been such a recurring tragedy in human affairs and how such atrocities can be
prevented.
