Genocide is the systematic attempt to kill all members of a particular social category, usually defined by characteristics such as race, ethnicity, religion, or nationality. The Holocaust perpetrated by Nazi Germany on the Jews of Europe, the destruction of Native American tribes in the United States, the Turkish massacre of more than a million Armenians between 1917 and 1919, and the mass killings in Cambodia in the 1970s and Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s are all examples of genocidal population policies designed to further the interests of social oppression, the accumulation of wealth and power, and other collective interests.
"genocide." The Blackwell Dictionary of Sociology. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000. Credo Reference. Web. 02 February 2012.