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Journal of Genocide Research

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Killing Neighbors: Webs of Violence in

Rwanda
a
David Simon
a
Yale University
Published online: 26 Sep 2011.

To cite this article: David Simon (2011) Killing Neighbors: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, Journal of
Genocide Research, 13:3, 359-361

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14623528.2011.595584

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 BOOK REVIEWS

Killing Neighbors: Webs of Violence in Rwanda

Lee Ann Fujii
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009
212 pp, $29.95 (hbk)

It remains an enduring challenge, both morally and academically, to comprehend

how so many ordinary people could be mobilized to kill upwards of half a million
fellow citizens during the Rwandan genocide. Drawing from extensive inter-
views—often including several iterations with a single respondent—conducted
in two research sites in different parts of Rwanda, Lee Ann Fujii challenges
some of the standard explanations of the genocide, such as elite mobilization,
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the power of ethnicity and the role of outsiders. She argues that, instead, partici-
pation in the genocide depended upon the social interconnectedness of partici-
pants: ‘It was social ties,’ writes Fujii, ‘that patterned processes of recruitment
and targeting’ in her research sites (p. 129).
Given that genocide is, by definition, an act that hinges upon presumptions of
ethnicity, one might expect that ethnic divisions were starkly drawn, and thereby
provided effective grist for mobilization simply by the common vocabulary they
offered. Fujii finds, to the contrary, that at least in the pre-genocide era, there is
little evidence for this. In an illuminating discussion that should usefully inform
discussions of ethnicity within and outside the Rwandan context, Fujii shows
how ethnicity was subjectively experienced—a shifting combination of ancestry,
choice and circumstance lived differently across, and even within, families. A
community’s experience during the civil war and genocide informed how individ-
uals perceived and valued ethnicity. In Fujii’s words, ‘ethnicity remained a term
subject to interpretation and reinterpretation according to the shifting conditions
of the war and genocide’ (p. 127). Accordingly, the subjective nature of ethnicity
diminishes the power of an ethnicity-centric explanation for violence. Any model
of mobilization that assumes elite entrepreneurs of violence need only to expose a
raw ethnic nerve, in which people are simply reminded of their categorical
animus, is insufficient.
Fujii shows that the key determinants of participation in Rwanda were not
ethnic proclivities per se, but rather strategies for responding to an obvious
crisis (war, the murder of the president, the appearance of entrepreneurs of vio-
lence) rooted in local social dynamics. The titular invocation of ‘neighbours’ res-
onates in the story, for, as Fujii demonstrates, Rwandans tend to ground their
identities in the community in which they live—particularly in rural settings.
Indeed, as in many such settings globally, conforming to community norms is a
matter of survival, no matter how contrary it might be to the prospects of immedi-
ate gain (or loss) for core personal values.
In essence, people were willing to kill (some of) their neighbours because it was
also (other) neighbours who were doing the killing—and putting pressure on those
not recruited early to join. Fujii describes interviewees who had relatives with a
stake in the perpetration of violence, or who belonged to peer groups that had
taken up arms, as the most likely to have joined in the killing episodes themselves

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 BOOK REVIEWS

(although seldom, per the interview snippets transcribed for the reader, with any
avowed enthusiasm). Conversely, those who resisted joining were relatively less
connected to their community. Perhaps the most telling anecdote is that of a
man who perpetrated genocidal acts while marauding with a group, but then
helped a Tutsi boy—encountered away from the group—evade the band of killers.
One of the contributions of the book is to make meaningful the range of choices
and actions available to ordinary Rwandans in 1994. Fujii accomplishes this in
part by devoting much of her analysis to people she describes as ‘joiners’,
whom she defines as the ‘lowest-level participants’ who ‘did not lead or organize
the genocide but were responsible for carrying out much of the violence against
Tutsi in their communities’ (p. 15). She also proposes a ‘spectrum of responses
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to genocide’, ranging from ‘rescuing’ to ‘killing’, with several points in

between (‘resisting’, ‘witnessing’, ‘evading’, ‘pillaging’ and ‘denouncing,’ in
that order [p. 30]). The notion of the spectrum is potentially problematic, given
the implication of a linear, hierarchical ladder of culpability. However, Fujii
wisely marshals substantial evidence to show that many—perhaps most—Rwan-
dans at different times (and sometimes simultaneously) engaged in behaviours
described by multiple points on the spectrum. As the anecdote about the group
member who helps save a boy when not with his group suggests, Fujii’s spectrum
is useful as a categorical scheme regarding acts, not actors. Indeed, it is a funda-
mental contribution of the book to demonstrate that, depending on the social
context, the same actors may engage in different acts.
Another contribution of Killing Neighbours is to offer a more bottom-up view
of the genocide than is typically the case. Much of the work on the Rwandan gen-
ocide that addresses the process of mobilization focuses on the messages and the
message-makers. Fujii explores how the messages were processed and reacted to.
Some works that also favour this perspective, like Scott Straus’s The Order of
Genocide or Jean Hatzfeld’s Machete Season,1 manage to address perpetrators’
motivations, but do so by extrapolating primarily (if not exclusively) from the tes-
timony of prisoners who had confessed to their crimes. While Straus’s and Hatz-
feld’s results may be informative, Fujii expands the field of vision. Her long-form
interviews allow her to set out a range of levels of engagement, including not just
leaders and followers, but also people who resisted recruitment into the genocide
enterprise. As a result, she can focus on the moment of recruitment, and the press-
ures influencing people to decide to join (or not). She is able to acknowledge the
limits to agency, without doing away with the concept altogether.
Indeed, Fujii proves herself to be an excellent listener and raconteur. Yet there
are moments in which one wonders whether the passage of time, along with the
exigencies of the day, have not created too neat a story. (Too her credit, Fujii
addresses these concerns in both the description of her methodology and the con-
clusion.) For example, while striving to maintain that her informants indeed pos-
sessed agency, Fujii presents ‘joiners’ as what one might call context-takers.
Several interviewees describe moments akin to facing a choice as the mob
appears on the doorstep. Yet a key element of the genocide was the ability of
norm entrepreneurs to create a new context. One is led to ask, then, how did the

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mob get there? Who were the first to join, to give the social process the kind of
momentum that so many of Fujii’s informants found irresistible? How did the
norm of accepting the killing of neighbours become established?
While these questions admittedly lie outside the scope of the questions Fujii
seeks to answer, their absence provides what may be a too-convenient absolution
for many of her informants. For example, Fujii describes one notorious initiator,
‘Jude’, who is blamed with much of the instigation of the genocide as it played out
in one of Fujii’s research sites: from overthrowing resistance-inclined elites to
organizing (and incentivizing) mob participation. Yet the now-deceased Jude is
presented as an exogenous force, an element to which others had to relate, cali-
brate and react. As long as Jude is permitted to remain out of the picture, the
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story is both incomplete and slightly suspect. After all, why should an admitted
participant accept too much of the blame, when the spectre of ‘Jude’ is available
to deflect it?
The work also serves as a useful reminder of how the course of the genocide—
as well as life before it—varied significantly in different parts of Rwanda. Fujii
offers rich data and analysis about two Rwandan communes. Both may be
typical of the regions in which they are found, but are likely quite different
from communes in other regions. Hatzfeld’s informants tell a seemingly different
story, with a greater emphasis on individual incentives, and a lesser one on
socially embedded mores. However, the history, politics, wartime experience
and geography in Bugesera are as different from those of Fujii’s pseudonymous
communes of ‘Ngali’ and ‘Kimanzi’ as Hatzfeld’s research strategy is from
Fujii’s. The same is true of Kibungo, Butare and the trio of southwestern prefec-
tures most distant from the RPF’s advances. It is a dilemma for a work such as
Fujii’s that the very emphasis on local dynamics hinders the prospect of advancing
more broadly applicable generalizations.
Killing Neighbors is nonetheless a remarkable achievement that deepens our
knowledge of the Rwandan genocide. The writing is excellent, and the core
approach should provide an exemplar for other scholars seeking to conduct
research in Rwanda (or other environments in which the larger political context
does not favour the researcher). Even in light of the limits to generalizing for
Rwanda as a whole, Killing Neighbors is valuable for its contributions to under-
standing how ethnicity is experienced, and how those experiences relate to
micro-level patterns of mass violence.

David Simon # 2011

Yale University
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14623528.2011.595584

Note and references

1 Scott Straus, The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
2006); Jean Hatzfeld, Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak (trans. Linda Coverdale) (New York:
Picador, 2006).

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