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This article explores how the vernacular memory of the 1940s-era Ruzagayura famine was deployed to critique the contemporary Covid-19-induced hunger crisis in Rwanda. It methodologically advances memory studies scholarship by emphasising the importance of textual analyses of oral histories, poetry, proverbs and panegyrics, especially when transmitted on social media. This crucial revision can begin to redress the Eurocentric knowledge production approaches prevalent in memory studies. Transgenerational vernacular memories run parallel to, in relation with, and in competition with Rwanda's official memorialisation of historical crises. While the Ruzagayura famine and related narratives are forgotten in the official rewriting of history, they re-emerge and find new life online to be transmitted across generations and geographies. I consider how 'born-digital' youth revitalise oral histories of the famine as a form of resistance against official policy, and how powerful actors attempt to suppress these narratives. Thus, this paper contributes to broader literatures on resistance and memory politics in Rwanda and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarship about politics and the body in conflicts has gained prominence in academic debates. This article advances these conversations by arguing that bodily scars are potent 'carriers' of memories of mass atrocities committed during the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. Using both semi-structured interviews and a wide range of secondary sources, this study found that bodily scars – as physical manifestations of wartime torture and pain – evidence past atrocities and survivor resilience. Similarly, they are avenues through which the past is communicated and transformed (in ways that complement and surpass other mediums of memory). Bodily scars play powerful and complex roles in memory conversations; they communicate trauma and keep memories of the mass violence vivid in public and private realms. This article empirically contributes to discussions on the politics of memory in post-genocide Rwanda, and body studies and memory scholarship more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research note explores the pressing ethical challenges associated with increased online platforming of sensitive research on conflict-affected settings since the onset of Covid-19. We argue that moving research online and the 'digitalisation of suffering' risks reducing complexity of social phenomena and omission of important aspects of lived experiences of violence or peace-building. Immersion, 'contexting' and trust-building are fundamental to research in repressive and/or conflict-affected settings and these are vitally eclipsed in online exchanges and platforms. 'Distanced research' thus bears very real epistemological limitations. Neither proximity not distance are in themselves liberating vectors. Nonetheless, we consider the opportunities that distancing offers in terms of its decolonial potential, principally in giving local researcher affiliates' agency in the research process and building more equitable collaborations. This research note therefore aims to propose a series of questions and launch a debate amongst interested scholars, practitioners and other researchers working in qualitative research methods in the social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Open access (OA) journal publishing is presented in the literature as both an opportunity for and a threat to academics, authors and higher education systems. Institutions with information and communication technologies (ICT) infrastructure have enabled their academics to freely retrieve accessible content in various disciplines, which in turn increases the rate and quality of publications from these institutions. Using semi-structured interviews with Kenyan faculty, students and librarians and with Kenyan and non-Kenyan publishers, as well as secondary sources, this article examines perspectives often overlooked in this debate. The paper concludes that while OA is considered an important initiative that could enhance knowledge production and consumption in Kenya, it nevertheless presents its own challenges, which should not be overlooked. OA is not a simple solution to individual and institutional challenges or systemic epistemic injustices, which lead to poor-quality knowledge circulating via some OA platforms and have the potential to dampen the global competitiveness of knowledge produced in Kenya and other countries in the Global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue asks what happens to international research and collaboration when the research community becomes temporarily immobilized. The COVID-19 global pandemic powerfully disrupted normal ways of doing research and, therefore, created a perfect natural experiment of the “otherwise” for digital qualitative research in sensitive contexts. The collected papers argue that the lessons extracted from this recent global health crisis should shape our thinking on qualitative research amid crisis and research on the crisis. The authors speak to core themes like the digital platforming of research, continued inequality in research relations, and the concept of compounding crises. The special issue reflects on the authors’ own experiences with international collaborations during COVID-19 in a multiplicity of contexts from Peru, to Pakistan, Mexico and the Great Lakes Region of Africa. This introductory essay argues that the uniquely rapid and global context of COVID-19 offered a glimpse into one possible alterity of research production. It extracts lessons for the present and future, not only for other global crises, but for willed disruptions of research relations so that these are marked by less inequality and more balanced power relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the interactions between the memories of Belgian peacekeepers killed in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, the weight of the colonial past, and the Belgian foreign policy. Using interviews with Belgian politicians and diplomats, families of peacekeepers, former blue helmets, as well as a corpus of official speeches, this article finds that the memorialization of blue helmets has influenced Belgian political choices on three levels, namely: domestic politics, its bilateral relationship with Rwanda, and more broadly its position in international peacekeeping. In doing so, this article contributes to interdisciplinary debates on the role of collective memory in domestic and international politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While academic literature has long explored the ways in which colonial reification of identity and narratives underpinning unequal racialised status of colonial subjects contributed to cycles of violence in the Great Lakes region, including in Rwanda, few ask the complementary question: Does the colonial legacy imprint on the 'post-conflict' era, shaping post-genocide attempts at nation-building and identity re-engineering carried out in the name of the broader project of peacebuilding? Using the conceptual framework of colonial durabilities, we argue that despite explicit attempts to remove the vestiges of colonialism, the colonial past endures, in everyday expressions of identity as well as in grand policies of its reformulation. The current paper aims to trace these vestiges in the transformations of identity politics and nation-building in Rwanda by looking at three distinct arenas: (i) the architecture of de-ethnicisation policy itself; (ii) the stubborn lingering of racialised distinctions in popular culture; and (iii) the rise of 'new' social divisions based on the country of exile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contributions of this special issue explore the concept of colonial durabilities in a bid to unearth both the concrete and invisible sites through which coloniality continues to circulate and materialise in the African Great Lakes Region (GLR). Colonial durabilities, we argue, are non-linear dynamic processes that suffuse the realities and structures of international and national politics, as well as the conduct of daily life. These become particularly evident in the knowledge economy of the GLR, in endeavours as broad as state building and everyday practices, within international development and peacebuilding interventions, and in academic theorising, methodologies and writing formats. We introduce the papers in this special issue that urge us to address an important question: Can we truly decolonise if we do not fully understand the coloniality of the present and its effects? We argue a careful investigation of the structural conditions that enable coloniality to actively form and re-form is essential to accurately understand real-world ramifications of asymmetrical power relations, a crucial aspect of the process of decolonisation. Lastly, we reflect on avenues for re-thinking the effects of colonial durabilities and to work towards generating anti-/de-colonial knowledges to perhaps achieve 'epistemic freedom'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent debates in post-genocide and post-war Rwanda have explored how official commemorations of the Genocide Against the Tutsi in many ways borrow and 'mimic' the Holocaust memory 'paradigm'. The academic canon on post-1994 Rwanda focuses the mostly on politics around this official memory that has evolved into hegemonic memory and on how it has been mobilized to promote a selective memory of the past. However, there is little analysis of vernacular, bottom-up memory practices that have evolved alongside the official one. Using observation, semi-structured interviews, and secondary sources, this article examines vernacular memory practices of mourning the wartime missing in Rwanda. Through the concepts of 'multidirectional' and 'traveling' memory, this study examines how survivors of these interconnected violent histories that unfolded in two different countries claim multi-faceted Agaciro (dignity, self-respect, and self-worth) through two different memory approaches. The article argues that while actors in official memory approach claim Agaciro through borrowing from another global hegemonic memory, respondents in this study created vernacular avenues to remember their missing loved ones. The article finds that while hegemonic memory might appear to only compete with vernacular memory, there are also 'knots' that connect these two memory forms in Rwanda's context and beyond. In its conclusion, the article proposes an Agaciro- centred approach to examine the relationships between official and unofficial memory practices that have been reenergized through protests both offline and online in Rwanda and beyond. The article contributes to scholarship on Rwanda's post-genocide memory politics, transcultural memory, and decolonial perspectives on dignity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper does not directly engage the state-formation, political settlement and state-building debates in Africa but it foregrounds the notion of conversation as the lens through which to examine Rwanda's state-building history. In particular, it explores an overlooked perspective from Rwanda's state-building trajectory by focusing on a particular class of actors – women – whose voices also contributed to inter-elite and elite-society state-building from pre-colonial times. The paper examines how and why conversible spaces have been created in post-genocide Rwanda that are locally conceived yet given form by Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) elites. It shows that these spaces are progressions of a long history of state-building conversations in Rwanda that pre-date colonialism. The paper asks how and why have conversible spaces for peace and state-building evolved over time? To what extent do their contemporary form have the potential for being genuinely transformative? What do these processes mean for future peace and state building in Rwanda? In addressing these questions, this paper foregrounds women's agency and contributions to state-building in Rwanda over time. It shows that while there is evidence that women's agency has evolved from covert to overt spaces, limitations to women's influence of peace-building and state-building conversations still exist particularly for those whose visions of society diverge from that of the ruling party Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, the post-genocide government spearheaded the creation of genocide commemorations. Over the past two decades, political elites and survivors' organizations have gone to great lengths to institutionalize the memorialization, including creating laws to protect the memory of the genocide from denialism. Ordinary Rwandans have responded to the annual commemorations using creative means of support for and disagreement with the government's interpretation of their shared violent past. Music has been used as citizen-driven tool to both spread and criticize genocide memorialization nationally and beyond. While scholars have explored the politicization of state-organized mechanisms such as memorials, citizen-driven creative means remain largely unexplored. Addressing this gap in Rwandan memory scholarship, I examine how Kizito Mihigo, a famous post-genocide musician, used his individual memory of surviving the genocide against the Tutsi through music to contribute and respond to the annual commemorations of the genocide. I argue that Mihigo's story and commemoration songs were politicized from the start but were intensified when he used his music to go beyond promoting genocide commemorations to questioning the events and when he pleaded guilty to terrorism charges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the positionality of local stakeholders in the production of knowledge through fieldwork in qualitative research in Northern Uganda. While scholarly literature has evolved on the positionality and experiences of researchers from the Global North in (post)conflict environments, little is known about the positionality and experiences of local stakeholders in the production of knowledge. This article is based on interviews and focus groups with research assistants and respondents in Northern Uganda. Using a phenomenological approach, this article analyzes the positionality and experiences of these research associates and respondents during fieldwork. Three themes emerged from these interviews and are explored in this article: power, fatigue, and safety. This article emphasizes that researchers need to be reflexive in their practices and highlights the need to reexamine how researchers are trained in qualitative methods before going into the field. This article is further critical of the behavior of researchers and how research agendas impact local stakeholders during and after fieldwork. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Refusal remains a core concern in processes of research across the sciences. Drawing on previous anthropological theorisations, this paper contemplates on the manifold 'arts' of refusal during ethnographic research praxis, drawing on diverse thematic experiences and contexts across coastal India, Malaysia, and Uganda. We argue for a concerted engagement with refusal as more than an act of withholding co-operation and as an expression of resistance. While recognizing refusal as a locally situated and historically contingent sensibility, we ask in what other ways might the more generative qualities of refusal be explored, paying particular attention to the performative nature of refusal itself that may entrench as much as reverse power differentials in the 'field'. Drawing on decolonial and post-development epistemologies and diverse experiences as scholars situated and working across different geographies and disciplines, we explore the many entanglements, articulations, and enactments that remain ubiquitous in everyday ethnographic research praxis through several thematic angles. These include the negotiation of uneven (and often violent) forms of research collaboration and cooptation, the enactment of benevolent sexism as an 'ethics of care', and embodied practices such as silence(-ing), together with play and humour in participants' critiques of scientific truth-telling. While illustrating subtler manifestations of refusal across ethnographic research-based encounters, we also contemplate pedagogical practices of un/learning (to 'read') and to teach the arts of identifying and productively working with the many appearances of refusal - both manifest and less visible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]