In To Save Heaven and
Earth , Jennie E. Burnet considers people who
risked their lives in the 1994 Rwandan genocide of Tutsi to try and
save those targeted for killing. Many genocide
perpetrators ...were not motivated by political ideology, ethnic
hatred, or prejudice. By shifting away from these classic
typologies of genocide studies and focusing instead on hundreds of
thousands of discrete acts that unfold over time, Burnet highlights
the ways that complex decisions and behaviors emerge in the social,
political, and economic processes that constitute a genocide.
To Save Heaven and Earth explores external factors,
such as geography, local power dynamics, and genocide timelines, as
well as the internal states of mind and motivations of those who
effected rescues. Framed within the interdisciplinary scholarship
of genocide studies and rooted in cultural anthropology
methodologies, this book presents stories of heroism and of the
good done amid the evil of a genocide that nearly annihilated
Rwandan Tutsi and decimated the Hutu and Twa who were opposed to
the slaughter.
In the aftermath of the 1994 genocide, Rwandan women faced the impossible—resurrecting their lives amidst unthinkable devastation. Haunted by memories of lost loved ones and of their own ...experiences of violence, women rebuilt their lives from “less than nothing.” Neither passive victims nor innate peacemakers, they traversed dangerous emotional and political terrain to emerge as leaders in Rwanda today. This clear and engaging ethnography of survival tackles three interrelated phenomena—memory, silence, and justice—and probes the contradictory roles women played in postgenocide reconciliation.     Based on more than a decade of intensive fieldwork, Genocide Lives in Us provides a unique grassroots perspective on a postconflict society. Anthropologist Jennie E. Burnet relates with sensitivity the heart-wrenching survival stories of ordinary Rwandan women and uncovers political and historical themes in their personal narratives. She shows that women’s leading role in Rwanda’s renaissance resulted from several factors: the dire postgenocide situation that forced women into new roles; advocacy by the Rwandan women’s movement; and the inclusion of women in the postgenocide government.
Building on previous studies of women's formal, descriptive, and substantive representation in Rwanda, this article examines women's symbolic representation, defined as the broader social and ...cultural impact of the greater representation of women in the Rwandan political system. It explores the cultural meanings of gender quotas by analyzing popular perceptions of women, of women's roles in politics and society more broadly, and of changing cultural practices vis-à-vis gender. Data were gathered over 24 months of ethnographic research conducted between 1997 and 2009 and by ongoing documentary research. The study finds that although Rwandan women have made few legislative gains, they have reaped other benefits, including increased respect from family and community members, enhanced capacity to speak and be heard in public forums, greater autonomy in decision making in the family, and increased access to education. Yet there have also been some unexpected negative consequences, such as increased friction with male siblings, male withdrawal from politics, increased marital discord, and a perception that marriage as an institution has been disrupted by the so-called upheaval of gender roles. Most significantly, increased formal representation of women has not led to increased democratic legitimacy for the government.
The ‘fast track’ approach for increasing women's representation in politics through the adoption of electoral gender quotas has replaced the ‘incremental approach’ (waiting for cultural, political ...and socioeconomic developments over time) in recent years. Scholars have disagreed whether increasing women's representation in sub-Saharan Africa where legislatures are weak and executives are strong is meaningless or may even undermine democracy; or increasing women's representation results in significant substantive or symbolic representation effects. This article compares two divergent cases: Botswana, a stable multiparty democracy in southern Africa and Rwanda, an increasingly authoritarian single party dominant state in east Africa. In Botswana, gender quota campaigns have raised awareness but have been unsuccessful in achieving quotas, and women's parliamentary representation is low and continues to fall. In Rwanda, a constitutional gender quota, including reserved seats combined with voluntary party quotas for women have resulted in a majority female lower house of parliament—the only such parliament in the world. These cases suggest that a democratic state is not necessarily more likely to adopt gender quotas or have more women in parliament than a less democratic one and that there are other factors that are more important in determining both. Moreover, in single party dominant systems with limited democracy, like Rwanda, elected women are able to represent women's interests, and campaigns to adopt quotas, even when unsuccessful as in democratic Botswana, can contribute to substantive and symbolic representation effects even with only limited descriptive representation. Thus, the conditions under which and the ways in which women's interests are represented must be understood broadly.
Across Africa, many countries have taken initiatives to increase the participation and representation of women in governance. Yet it is unclear what meaning these initiatives have in authoritarian, ...single-party states like Rwanda. Since seizing power in 1994, the Rwandan Patriotic Front has taken many steps to increase the participation of women in politics such as creating a Ministry of Gender, organizing women's councils at all levels of government, and instituting an electoral system with reserved seats for women in the national parliament. This article explores the dramatic increase in women's participation in public life and representation in governance and the increasing authoritarianism of the Rwandan state under the guise of 'democratization'. The increased political participation of women in Rwanda represents a paradox in the short term: as their participation has increased, women's ability to influence policy making has decreased. In the long term, however, increased female representation in government could prepare the path for their meaningful participation in a genuine democracy because of a transformation in political subjectivity.
This article situates the sexual violence associated with the Rwandan civil war and 1994 genocide within a local cultural history and political economy in which institutionalized gender violence ...shaped the choices of Rwandan women and girls. Based on ethnographic research, it argues that Western notions of sexual consent are not applicable to a culture in which colonialism, government policy, war, and scarcity of resources have limited women's access to land ownership, economic security, and other means of survival. It examines emic cultural models of sexual consent and female sexual agency and proposes that sexual slavery, forced marriage, prostitution, transactional sex, nonmarital sex, informal marriage or cohabitation, and customary (bridewealth) marriages exist on a continuum on which female sexual agency becomes more and more constrained by material circumstance. Even when women's choices are limited, women still exercise their agency to survive. Conflating all forms of sex in conflict zones under the rubric of harm undermines women's and children's rights because it reinforces gendered hierarchies and diverts attention from the structural conditions of poverty in postconflict societies.
Transitional Justice Hinton, Alexander Laban
2010, 20100526, 2010-05-30, 20100101
eBook
How do societies come to terms with the aftermath of genocide and mass violence, and how might the international community contribute to this process? Recently, transitional justice mechanisms such ...as tribunals and truth commissions have emerged as a favored means of redress. Transitional Justice, the first edited collection in anthropology focused directly on this issue, argues that, however well-intentioned, transitional justice needs to more deeply grapple with the complexities of global and transnational involvements and the local on-the-ground realities with which they intersect.Contributors consider what justice means and how it is negotiated in different localities where transitional justice efforts are underway after genocide and mass atrocity. They address a variety of mechanisms, among them, a memorial site in Bali, truth commissions in Argentina and Chile, First Nations treaty negotiations in Canada, violent youth groups in northern Nigeria, the murder of young women in post-conflict Guatemala, and the gacaca courts in Rwanda.
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