To Save Heaven and Earth: Rescue in the Rwandan Genocide

by Jennie E. Burnet

Overview

In To Save Heaven and Earth, Jennie E. Burnet considers people who risked their lives in the 1994 Rwandan genocide of Tutsi to try and save those targeted for killing. Many genocide perpetrators were not motivated by political ideology, ethnic hatred, or prejudice. By shifting away from these classic typologies of genocide studies and focusing instead on hundreds of thousands of discrete acts that unfold over time, Burnet highlights the ways that complex decisions and behaviors emerge in the social, political, and economic processes that constitute a genocide.

To Save Heaven and Earth explores external factors, such as geography, local power dynamics, and genocide timelines, as well as the internal states of mind and motivations of those who effected rescues. Framed within the interdisciplinary scholarship of genocide studies and rooted in cultural anthropology methodologies, this book presents stories of heroism and of the good done amid the evil of a genocide that nearly annihilated Rwandan Tutsi and decimated the Hutu and Twa who were opposed to the slaughter.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501767104
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	01/15/2023
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.06(d)

About the Author

Jennie E. Burnet is Director of the Institute for Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Associate Professor of Anthropology at Georgia State University. She is the author of Genocide Lives in Us. Follow her on X @DrJennieBurnet.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. Dynamics of Violence in the Gray Zone
2. Agency and Morality in the Gray Zone
3. Muslim Exceptionalism and Genocide
4. Resistance, Rescue, and Religion
5. The Border as Salvation and Snare
6. At the Margins of the State
7. Altruism, Agency, and Martyrdom in the Gray Zone
Conclusion

What People are Saying About This

Timothy P. Longman

An important contribution to the study of Rwanda, To Save Heaven and Earth challenges our tendency to put people into simple categories as victims, perpetrators, bystanders, and rescuers, urging us to reflect on genocide resistance and participation in new ways.

Susan Thomson

To Save Heaven and Earth addresses key debates connecting genocide, conflict, political science, and feminist security studies. In this book, Jennie E. Burnet expertly conceptualizes the 1994 Rwandan genocide as a subset of social relations of experience.

Editorial Reviews

Much more than any other study of Rwanda's 1994 genocide, this volume examines the profoundly significant phenomenon of courage. Jennie E. Burnet's fine analysis goes beyond structural frameworks and provides an incremental, interdisciplinary, and theoretical approach to the subject.

Choice