Gender & Genocide in Burundi: The Search for Spaces of Peace in the Great Lakes Region (review)

Patricia O. Daley, of Jesus College, Oxford, has provided her readers with an excellent discussion of what, in her introduction, she discusses as a culture of genocide in the area of Africa where Rwanda and Burundi are a geographic part, with specific reference to Burundi. In a well-delineated preface and acknowledgments, she explains the genesis of her research on Africa, which began in the 1980s in East and Central Africa with her doctoral research in Tanzania. At the time, she "examined the political and economic incorporation of Burundi refugees in Tanzania" (p. vi).

In ten lucid chapters, Daley discusses Burundi's culture of violence; a construction of a paradigm of violence; the colonial state; ethnicity and masculinity of the political state; the history of genocide; 1992-2005 genocidal politics; traditions of genocide; global humanitarianism; peace and war; and as a conclusion, the subtext of creating spaces of peace. In the sphere of refugee politics, Daley explains that thousands of Burundi refugees in Tanzania fled genocidal violence in their native Burundi in 1972, after which "a second generation was born in exile" (preface). Reportedly, Daley spent a year with the refugees in Tanzania's Manda District.

Several scholars have hailed the contents of the book. University of Oxford social anthropology professor Wendy James sees the publication as an original masterly contribution to African studies and the global literature of violence in the post–Cold War era. Daley's book offers readers a feministhistorical approach to the understanding of violence and reforming the processes under which local and international bodies construct peace agreements. She opens the book with five maps, which depict the Great Lakes Region; provinces of Burundi; the Bujumbura District; refugees and displaced persons of the region; and the various Burundi refugee camps of Tanzania.

To show the relevance of the work to aspects of Africa's Charter on Human and People's Rights of 1981, Daley quotes from the charter: "Human beings are inviolable. Every human being shall be entitled to respect for his [or her] life and the integrity of his person" (Article 4). In spite of these words, Daley reports that in 1972 alone, "genocide in the Central African state of Burundi wiped out 3.5 per cent of the country's population in a few weeks" (p. 1; and in Lemarchand and Martin, 1974).

Daley offers a detailed discussion of approaches to violent conflict in Africa. She explains how Chabal and Daloz (1990) have shown that "Africans prosper on disorder" (p. 2); she adds that another reason has a lot to do with tribal loyalties and the fear of one another, adding that a second and long-standing explanation for conflict in Africa "comes from the paradigm of environmental determinism underpinned by neo-Malthusianism" (pp. 3-4).

According to Daley, chapter 2 of the book is her conceptual chapter, which aims to assert and validate the victims' ordinary humanity. For the other side of the coin on violence, she shows several aspects of the situation, whereby she discusses the centralization of violence, with an emphasis on the construction of the modern military. Also discussed succinctly but lucidly is the postcolonial state of 1961-1972. An additional overview in the same chapter is the history of genocide. To support the contents of the publication, Daley provides useful diagrams, which depict armed groups and rebels (p. 150), traditions of genocide and militarism (pp. 151-153), and Rwanda's Hutu rebels (p. 154).

The final section, chapter 11, is principally a summary of "the key contributions of the book, [which] seeks to suggest ways in which feministhistorical methodology of the twenty-first century can assist in the creation of spaces of peace in Africa" (p. 231). Above all, Daley has offered a search of spaces and peace, where she discusses David Harvey's vision of utopia. Through the concept of spaces of peace in Africa, she underscores how the entity helps...