To Save Heaven and Earth: Rescue in the Rwandan Genocide - Softcover

Burnet, Jennie E.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1501767119 ISBN 13: 9781501767111

Publisher: Cornell University Press, 2023

Synopsis

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.

About this title

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.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1501767119
• ISBN 13: 9781501767111
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 312