ABSTRACT

This paper does not directly engage the state-formation, political settlement and state-building debates in Africa but it foregrounds the notion of conversation as the lens through which to examine Rwanda’s state-building history. In particular, it explores an overlooked perspective from Rwanda’s state-building trajectory by focusing on a particular class of actors – women – whose voices also contributed to inter-elite and elite-society state-building from pre-colonial times. The paper examines how and why conversible spaces have been created in post-genocide Rwanda that are locally conceived yet given form by Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) elites. It shows that these spaces are progressions of a long history of state-building conversations in Rwanda that pre-date colonialism. The paper asks how and why have conversible spaces for peace and state-building evolved over time? To what extent do their contemporary form have the potential for being genuinely transformative? What do these processes mean for future peace and state building in Rwanda? In addressing these questions, this paper foregrounds women’s agency and contributions to state-building in Rwanda over time. It shows that while there is evidence that women’s agency has evolved from covert to overt spaces, limitations to women’s influence of peace-building and state-building conversations still exist particularly for those whose visions of society diverge from that of the ruling party Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF).

摘要

本文不直接涉及非洲的国家形成、政治解决和国家建设辩论，但它突出了对话的概念，作为审视卢旺达国家建设历史的镜头。特别是，它通过关注特定类别的行动者——女性——来探索卢旺达国家建设轨迹中一个被忽视的视角，她们的声音也对前殖民时代的精英社会和精英社会的国家建设做出了贡献。该论文研究了可转换空间的方式和原因是在种族灭绝后的卢旺达创建的，由卢旺达爱国阵线 (RPF) 精英在当地构思但形成。它表明，这些空间是卢旺达在殖民主义之前的国家建设对话的悠久历史的进展。这篇论文询问了和平与国家建设的可转换空间如何以及为什么随着时间的推移而演变？他们的当代形式在多大程度上具有真正变革的潜力？这些进程对卢旺达未来的和平和国家建设意味着什么？在解决这些问题时，本文突出了妇女的能动性和随着时间的推移对卢旺达国家建设的贡献。它表明，虽然有证据表明女性的能动性已经从隐蔽空间演变为公开空间，