‘Since the wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed’, states the 1948 UNESCO constitution. Molly Sundberg's anthropological study provides a chilling picture of how the reconstruction of minds is being conducted in post-genocide Rwanda. The Rwandan state has set out to detach people from older divisive affinities and mould them into a unified collective belief system. It uses not only symbols but also an ideology shaping and constraining everyday life.
Sundberg draws upon to Michel Foucault's concept of persuasive power, practised by elites to rule people without physical coercion. In theory, without being aware of the state's control, people can come to behave as desired by the state. In practice, Sundberg finds, local people resort to a double face, one for the guardians and the other for their intimate communities.
Sunberg introduces the theoretical parameters of her research by reflecting upon the concepts of ‘state’ and ‘government’. She aligns with the Anglo-American notion of state as an idea and ‘government’ as its realisation in the life of a community. In a more Foucauldian sense, government is internalized and experienced by the stakeholders rather than an external institution. ‘Governmentality’ implies the integration of the political project of model citizenship into a people's life-world.
Sundberg's research questions are broadly of the potential of the state to intervene in the dynamics of social life. The social context of the study is urban: Sundberg has interviewed and observed urbanites of various ranks in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. Rather than present an objective historical report of what is happening, she instead draws from the stakeholders’ experiences to reflect upon the social technologies of the elites and the impact of those technologies on the community. In recognition of the challenges to obtaining uncensored data under an authoritarian state, she focuses on the meanings attributed by the stakeholders to public texts and statements rather than upon the face value of the texts.
Sundberg's lengthy stay in Kigali and her full-time personal participation in a civic education programme give her ethnography a richness that moves beyond anecdote. Her findings are supported by an impressive engagement with current studies on the anthropology of political transition, the sociology of memory, and critical theory of the state.
Sundberg focuses particular attention on a vernacular martial arts and dance instruction tradition for elite youth known as itorero, which was revived and modified by the Tutsi regime after 1997 as the main tool for moulding model citizens. Itorero as a project is conducted on two levels, the first of which consists of training camps where key youth leaders are re-educated to loyalty towards the state by means of symbolic immersion and channelled work experiences. The participants are eventually made to sign ‘performance contracts’, by means of which their life after the camp will be controllable through ongoing cultural events such as dances. On the second level, the local communities come to structure their behaviour and beliefs in terms of itorero values and practices.
The older indigenous tradition behind itorero had included a cult of royalty and a military education. Sundberg analyses the paradox of itorero combining nostalgia for the past with a relentless pursuit of modernisation. According to the official narrative, the renaissance to dawn after the genocide would call for an authoritarian state and a capitalist economy. The policy of ‘performance contracts’ thus reifies neoliberal values of individual responsibility and market productivity. Capitalism, according to Sundberg, does not imply democracy, at least not in Rwanda.
Sundberg is critical of the Rwandan state; the historical narrative the state purveys is more fictive than not. Neither does the authoritarianism of the state unite people, if the divided, sometimes even cynical, views expressed by Sundberg's interviewees are any indication. The Rwandan case is worth considering for post-conflict and post-transitional states in search of stability. Sundberg's book is an exceptionally insightful and methodologically sound example of ‘anthropology of authoritarianism’.
