Genocide

What happens to people and the societies in which they live after genocide? How are the devastating events remembered on the individual and collective levels, and how do these memories intersect and diverge as the rulers of post-genocidal states attempt to produce a more monolithic 'truth' about the past? In this important volume, leading anthropologists consider such questions about the relationship of genocide, truth, memory, and representation in the Balkans, Guatemala, Indonesia, East Timor, Germany, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sudan, and other locales. Specialists on the societies they write about, these anthropologists draw on ethnographic research to provide on-the-ground analyses of communities in the wake of mass brutality. They investigate how mass violence is described or remembered, and how those representations are altered by the attempts of others, ranging from NGOs to governments, to assert 'the truth' about outbreaks of violence. One contributor questions the neutrality of an international group monitoring violence in Sudan and the assumption that, at worst, such groups are benign. Another examines the consequences of how events, victims, and perpetrators are portrayed by the Rwandan government on the annual day marking that country's 1994 genocide. Still another explores the silence around the deaths of 80,000-100,000 people on Bali during Indonesia's state-sponsored anticommunist violence of 1965-66, a genocidal period that until only recently was rarely referenced in tourist guidebooks, anthropological studies on Bali, or even among the Balinese themselves. Other contributors consider issues of political identity and legitimacy, coping, the media, and 'ethnic cleansing'. "Genocide: Truth, Memory, and Representation" reveals the major contribution that cultural anthropologists can make to the study of genocide.