Women and War in Rwanda: Gender, Media and the Representation of Genocide

by Georgina Holmes

Overview

Focusing on television media reporting of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and its aftermath, this book explores how African states directly involved in conflict, western states with geopolitical interests in Africa's Great Lakes region, militia groups, human rights activists and NGOs use gendered media narratives strategically, often engaging in politics of revisionism and denial, to change the behaviour of other actors in the international system.
Critically analysing BBC documentary films and news features and drawing on interviews with British, Rwandan and Congolese jourbanalists, filmmakers, political commentators and human rights activists Georgina Holmes argues that documentary films and political discussion programmes are postcolonial contact zones, wherein competing actors perform in an attempt to influence international political decision-making on military and humanitarian intervention and public perceptions of genocide and war.
The book breaks new ground in understanding how Rwandan and Congolese women actively engage in producing and shaping international public discourse on genocide and war, despite being depicted as silent, passive victims of conflict. This book is essential reading on the gendered dynamics of media reporting on conflicts and will appeal to anyone with an interest in Feminist Security Studies, Political Communication, Media and Film Studies, African Studies, Genocide Studies and International Relations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781838605797
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	10/31/2019
Series:	International Library of African Studies
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.73(d)

About the Author

Georgina Holmes holds a PhD in International Relations from SOAS, and a JD specialising in public relations. She is an Honorary Research Associate in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Maps

Introduction

1. Contextualizing media events: war and genocide in Rwanda and the east of Congo

2. Rwandan women and war

3. Militarizing women, preparing for genocide: Hutu extremist magazine Kangura 1990-94

4. Newsnight

5. Remembering genocide, forgetting politics: the BBC's institutional narrative post-1994

6. 'Living on gold should be a blessing should be a blessing, instead it is a curse' ; mass rape in the Congo

Conclusion

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Georgina Holmes takes up an important discussion of how gender can be used as an enabler of different agendas in political warscapes."
Jill Trenholm, Uppsala University

"In this carefully researched work, Georgina Holmes sets out a series of fundamental challenges: to media presenters and reporters about their knowledge and professionalism; to feminist (and other) theorists about the roles of women as both victims and agents; to politicians about their attitudes and behaviour with respect to the threat and actuality of genocide; and to civil society as a whole regarding issues of race, international relations, and Africa. In this study of women, genocide, and war in Rwanda there are critical lessons for all of us."
Ken Booth, Aberystwyth University

"Scholars of gender and media, conflict in Africa, and feminist international relations will find this book stimulating and informative. Scholars specializing in the African Great Lakes region may also find the book helpful as a reliable source of information about international and regional media reporting on or operating in Rwanda and eastern Congo."
Jennie E. Burnet, Georgia State University

From the Publisher

"When read as a set of case studies of gender, media representations, and violent conflict, this book is highly compelling. Holmes deftly analyzes how media of the Global North represent African women in ways that depict them as helpless victims without any agency. Her examination of the BBC's various news programs representation of the conflicts in the African Great Lakes and genocide in Rwanda is well grounded in primary sources and clearly connected to relevant international relations literature...Scholars of gender and media, conflict in Africa, and feminist international relations will find this book stimulating and informative. Scholars specializing in the African Great Lakes region may also find the book helpful as a reliable source of information about international and regional media reporting on or operating in Rwanda and eastern Congo between 1990 and 2010."

Jennie E. Burnet