Andrea Purdeková of the African Studies Centre at Oxford University has written an impressive book about Rwanda's post-genocide unity and reconciliation initiatives. Drawing on seven months of doctoral fieldwork, Purdeková sheds much-needed light on the promise of unity and reconciliation through two key mechanisms: the ingando re-education and reintegration camps as well as the work of the National Unity and Reconciliation Commission (pp. 129–221). In Purdeková’s own words, Making Ubumwe is a ‘politography’ of the process of unity and reconciliation in Rwanda, meaning she studies them as part of a state-led and top-down socially engineered unity-building project (pp. 11–12). As such, Making Ubumwe is a richly empirical study of ‘the ‘life’ of unity after a genocide when the notion gains special salience, currency and hence a unique form’ (p. 244). It is also an important contribution to theories of the state. Purdeková understands the state as a series of ambiguous multiple practices that are at once political yet depoliticised as the current government focuses its efforts on developing a common Rwandan identity in pursuit of the twin goals of unity and reconciliation (pp. 55–7).

Purdeková is clear about the goals of her project. It is not a book about Rwanda per se. Instead, she seeks to understand and explain the idea of unity, how members of various constituencies in Rwanda talk about it, what the idea of unity means to them, how the idea is then translated into praxis, and how individuals perform its sometimes disparate goals in the face of a strong authoritarian state (p. 10). In focusing on how unity is talked about, and thus made real in people's lives – whether the administrators charged with ensuring unity or ordinary people subject to its demands – Purdeková skilfully deconstructs narratives of unity and reconciliation as products of both voice and silence (pp. 33–59). She also renders visible the vertical administrative structures of the state as well as its horizontal capabilities – meaning the ability of the current regime to bring people into the machinery of the state through multiple responsibilities (pp. 89–112). Purdeková asks a novel question beyond the usual ‘what makes African states weak?’. Instead, she asks how the power of the state reaches people, and how this presence shapes individual and collective engagement with state-led practices of unity and reconciliation through discourses of fear, development and securitisation as narratives central to Rwanda's current social and political transformation (pp. 225–43).

This is a book that deserves to be widely read. The analysis could use more historical depth, and the rich corpus of ethnographic studies on Rwanda since the genocide is barely consulted. Still, Purdeková’s study will appeal to both Rwanda and African Studies scholars, and is a must-read for graduate students preparing to do fieldwork in Rwanda. Scholars working in development studies, peace and conflict studies, comparative politics and cultural anthropology will be rewarded for a careful read. Development workers and diplomats will also benefit, as understanding the power dynamics behind government efforts to unify and reconcile Rwandans is central to their work.