A01=Liisa H. Malkki
africa
assimilation
Author_Liisa H. Malkki
borders
burundi
Category=JBCC
Category=JBFG
Category=JBSL
Category=JPVR
Category=NHAH
colonialism
community
conflict
cosmology
death
diaspora
dispossession
enemies
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
ethnicity
exile
genocide
grief
history
homeland
hutu
identity
immigration
insurrection
liminality
loss
memory
military
nonfiction
othering
politics
race
rebellion
refugees
resistance
rwanda
soldiers
statelessness
tanzania
tutsi
violence
war
Product details
- ISBN 9780226502724
- Weight: 567g
- Dimensions: 17 x 23mm
- Publication Date: 15 Aug 1995
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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This study of Hutu refugees from Burundi, driven into exile in Tanzania after their 1972 insurrection against the dominant Tutsi was brutally quashed, shows how experiences of dispossession and violence are remembered and turned into narratives, and how this process helps to construct identities such as "Hutu" and "Tutsi." Through extensive fieldwork in two refugee communities, the author finds that the refugees' current circumstances significantly influence these constructions. Those living in organized camps created an elaborate "mythico-history" of the Hutu people, which gave significance to exile, and envisioned a collective return to the homeland of Burundi. Other refugees, who had assimilated in a more urban setting, crafted identities in response to the practical circumstances of their day-to-day lives. Malkki reveals how such things as national identity, historical consciousness and the social imagination of "enemies" get constructed in the process of everyday life.
The book closes with an epilogue looking at the recent violence between Hutu and Tutsi in Rwanda and Burundi, showing how the movement of large refugee populations across national borders has shaped patterns of violence in the region.
