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Since taking power in July 1994, the RPF government has strived to eliminate the Hutu/Tutsi identities from public discourse, replacing the previous divisive identities with a unified nationalist one. For those who use Hutu/Tutsi identities outside the context of the genocide, they are considered genocidaire sympathisers, negationists and spreading divisionism. However, within the context of the genocide, the role of “ethnicity” is being reinforced and reaffirming ethnic divisions. In 2008, the Rwandan parliament officially changed the 1994 Rwandan genocide to the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi. Based on ethnographic data collected from March until October 2008, this paper will argue that within the public discourse on the genocide, the victim/perpetrator dichotomy has become intertwined with the Tutsi/Hutu identities, creating a hierarchy of victimhood. It will explore how through the process of reconciliation and in particular through gacaca the Hutu and Tutsi identities are imbued with collective guilt and victimization.

The social categories “Hutu” and “Tutsi” have long been central to Rwandan politics, though never more so than during the 1994 genocide, when they formed the ultimate divide: kill (Hutu) or be killed (Tutsi). Since then, the Rwandan government has sought to eliminate these categories and replace them with a new, national identity category of “Rwandan.” This chapter draws on theories of state symbolic power and legibility to analyze how top-down projects of remaking Rwandans are being received from below. Specifically, we examine ordinary Rwandans' responses to gacaca, a community justice practice central to the state's National Unity and Reconciliation Program, and find Rwandans resent efforts to “unmake race” in favor of “nation” because the state's account of genocide in gacaca does not allow them to sincerely express their experiences; it activates traumatic pasts for what they feel is superficial national reconciliation; and it detracts from their material needs. These findings highlight the importance of distinguishing between compliance and conviction in research on state efforts to transform civilian subjectivities. They also suggest directions for further research. Namely, future research on state symbolic power should attend to how individual experiences with violence mediate top-down efforts at remaking civilian subjectivities, to how different forms of governance shape civilian resistance to state categorization and classification projects, and to what kinds of interests are likely to motivate people to alter their self-perceptions. We conclude by arguing for more work on state race and nation-making from the perspectives of its targets.

This chapter explores the dual, contentions spaces of consciousness the Rwandan diaspora communities navigate. First of which was created through the stories of trauma and displacement since the Rwandan genocide and is influenced by the current Rwandan government's control over narratives of identities and remembrance both socially and politically. The second originated from the younger generations' attempt to assimilate to the only country they have never lived in and personally known. In this second space, the younger generations were forced, consciously or unconsciously, to choose between their communities' attachment to the past or creating a new path or future. Most importantly, being in diaspora means accepting that the different generations will often remain at the periphery of the new country, like outsiders looking inward. This phenomenon of social exclusion is a result of different factors, such as social categorisation, collective trauma and the narratives of otherness, which shape the different generations' identity shifts and sense of belonging. Using a phenomenological research method, this study analysed how one event, the 1994 Rwandan genocide, changed the meaning of diaspora consciousness and divided the communities into social categories such as ‘victims’ and ‘perpetrators’. Using the experiences of Rwandan American diaspora communities, I explored the impact of the labels of ‘victim’ and ‘perpetrator’ and how they have not only created specific narratives around remembrance and accountability but also crystallised the normative ideas of who was harmed and who was responsible for inflicting that harm. This chapter analysed the Rwandan communities' social development and assimilation, their understanding of their pasts and their members' social and political engagements in addressing their roles in their communities and nations.

Purpose – With an acknowledgement to Benedict Anderson's seminal writings on “imagined communities,” this paper examines several meanings and uses of the concept of imagination: theoretical, methodological, and substantive.

Methodology/approach – Application of these meanings are illustrated from eight qualitative researches, combining direct observations, interviews, participant observation, and document analysis.

Findings – Data are drawn from diverse settings, such as undocumented migrant communities, terrorism, Native American communities, collaborative divorce, nationalism, mass killers, players of video games, and genocide, to illustrate the potential uses and meanings of imagination.

Originality – These diverse researches illustrate the potential empirical and research contributions of these ideas.

The purpose of this paper is three‐fold: to extend the scope of postcolonial theory to organizational analysis; to extend the scope of organizational analysis to the study of supranational organizations; and to examine the impact of postcolonial organizational thought on the conception and treatment of the Rwandan people.

Organizational (in)action, both prior to and during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, is subjected to postcolonial organizational analysis.

It is shown that so‐called global organizational relations are mediated by supranational organizations, such as the United Nations, whose organizational structuring and practices are rooted in imperialist and postcolonial thinking.

It is recognised that the account of events presents an alternative but partial history of events in Rwanda.

The response to genocide in Rwanda by the global community represents a challenge to the promise of globalization, which posits that multinational organizational integration based on mutual interest is achievable.

The paper destablizes the notion of globalization and global cooperation by raising questions about the asymmetrical contexts in which supranational organizations operate.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a typological framework of approaches to the study of the Rwandan Tutsi genocide, in a comparative perspective. Based on the assertion that no single theoretical approach can account for so complex and totalizing a phenomenon, the paper targets different aspects of causality, drawing from three key publications by contemporary genocide scholars: Vern N. Redekop, Christopher Taylor and Mahmood Mamdani. It argues for their significant complementary contribution to a better understanding of the last genocide of the twentieth century. By offering different analytical angles, as demonstrated from each perspective, the paper enriches the conceptualisation of genocides in general, and the Rwandan Tutsi genocide in particular.

This paper focuses on the Rwandan Tutsi genocide. Drawing from three key contemporary authors, it identifies and analyses three theoretical approaches in a comparative perspective, namely, the human identity needs approach (Redekop, 2002), the politico-anthropological approach (Taylor, 2000) and the colonialist approach (Mamdani, 2002) which, if unified, would go a long way in providing a clearer picture and a better understanding of Rwandan Tutsi genocide.

Of course this does not mean that the three approaches account for every aspect of the phenomenon under study. It is a work in progress, reflecting the complex nature of genocide and the concomitant need to approach its analysis from different angles and perspectives. The selected authors address different key areas of scientific enquiry from different perspectives that complement each other, leading to a better understanding of the reality under investigation.

The authors learn from these approaches the constructed nature of ethnicity, what Benedict Anderson (1983, p. 211) calls the “imagined communities”. The Rwandese community was imagined by the colonial power, codifying the distinctions on the basis of such ridiculous criteria as cattle ownership and physical measurements, and issuing identity cards accordingly. In the final analysis, the choice of the most appropriate approaches to the study of genocide is a function of multiple factors: cultural, historical, political, anthropological, psychological, ethnographical, each genocide case being contextually different. The combination of the three approaches above seems to go a long way in confronting the complexity of the Rwandan Tutsi genocide.

As the authors have already mentioned, the theoretical approaches are not exhaustive. Yet, they have significant implications in terms of research processes.

Practically, these approaches lead to a deeper and broader understanding of genocide causality.

By tackling research issues from multiple angles, the product captures more elements that enable the shift from the structures of violence towards the structures of blessing.

It is the first time that such a research tool is made available to researchers wishing to deepen the understanding of the Rwandan Tutsi genocide.

This chapter intends to explore once more the vexing question of the relationship between environment and conflict and the role certain emotions like fear play in it. Given the fact that the empirical evidence about this relation is ambiguous, it suggests that the link between the two issues only makes sense and works whenever institutional factors such as the clear definition and enforcement of property rights are absent or weak within or across societies. The empirical cases of Rwanda and Nepal are used to illustrate this relationship. After a discussion of the data problems that the case raises, simulations of the conflict and the genocide of 1994 in Rwanda and of the Maoist uprising in Nepal are proposed. The simulation model accounts quite well for the conflict and genocide evolution in Rwanda and for the casualties of the uprising in Nepal.

To analyze the impact of policy on people's identities, and the conflicts which can result from this.

The case of the Rwanda genocide is used to examine identity disturbances related to policies.

Identity adjustments generated by policies can have devastating effects such as genocide. This raises the issue of national decision makers' responsibilities as well as those of the international institutions advocating and enforcing such policies.

This study implies that we need to consider the impacts of policies on people's identities and to extend such empirical research.

The issue of institutions' responsibilities must be discussed, for both national and international institutions; and a precautionary principle in decision making must be set for expert advisors.

The paper addresses the links between economic policies and their effects on individual identity, an area which has not yet been examined in economic studies.

In the early 1990s, the single-party regime of the Mouvement Révolutionnaire Nationale pour le Développement (MRND), headed by President Juvénal Habyarimana, came under growing pressure both internally and externally. Rwanda experienced widespread destitution and famine as state revenues from coffee exports fell from an annual US $144 million in 1985 to a mere US $30 million in 1993 (Debiel, 2003, p. 166). A Structural Adjustment Program (SAP), imposed upon Rwanda by the Bretton Woods institutions in September 1991, was largely irrelevant, if not conducive, to the rising impoverishment of the Rwandan people (Chossudovsky, 1994, p. 21). Between 1989 and 1993, the proportion of the population consuming less than 1,000 calories a day doubled from 15 percent to 31 percent (Maton, 1994).