A Hill Among a Thousand: Transformations and Ruptures in Rural RwandaSometimes called “the land of a thousand hills,” Rwanda has witnessed upheavals of massive proportions. Looking at the people of one hill community, Danielle de Lame shows how they coped with unprecedented change during the twilight years of Rwanda’s Second Republic. In an insightful, meticulously researched study focusing on the late 1980s and early 1990s, de Lame situates this rural community, located at the heart of the Kibuye prefecture, within the larger context of Rwandan history and society. In this country without villages, it is the networks of kinship, administration, and commerce that create complex patterns of solidarity and dependency. De Lame reveals these patterns in all their intricacy, and her treatment of the region and its rhythms speaks at the same time to the economics of production, the inequalities of power, and the dynamics of social transformation. The ultimate goal of her work is to restore the individuality of the people she studies, “making them neither executioners nor victims but men and women fashioning their own destiny, day after day.” Copublished with the Royal Museum for Central Africa Wisconsin edition not for sale in Europe. |
Contents
The History and Culture | 3 |
From the Enigmatic Kingdom to the Second | 42 |
1 | 52 |
Opening Collusion in Secrecy | 65 |
Sacred Kingship and Development | 78 |
2 | 114 |
Living Time Lives of Today | 168 |
Landless Country People | 207 |
Part III | 303 |
The Cows of Freedom | 341 |
Economic Transactions Involving Cattle or Around Cattle | 357 |
An Ideal World | 366 |
Women Like Rain? | 385 |
Of Honey and Blood The Wealth | 459 |
| 495 | |
Appendices | 519 |
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Common terms and phrases
Abadahumbya administration Africa alliances Astérie Athanasie Bagabo banana beer banana plantation brother burgomaster Butare cash cattle central chief child church circulation civil servants clan clientship colonial context cosmopolitan Coupez cultural d'Hertefelt daughter drink economy elite enclosure Esdras ethnic everyday exchanges farm father feasts gifts girl Gisenyi Gitarama hill hillside household husband Hutu identity inkwano integration Josefu Kabera Kabgayi Kibuye Kigali kinship Kirinda land Lemarchand lineage live marriage married milk modern monetarization monetary mother Munzanga Murundi Mutara Rudahigwa mwami neighbors Newbury Nyaminani parents Parmehutu participation patrilinear peasants political produce redistribution region relations Reyntjens rites ritual role rural Rwabugiri Rwandan Second Republic secteur shared social society sorghum beer space spatial strategies sub-chief sweet potatoes symbolic tion tontines traditional transactions Tutsi ubuhake Uganda wage-earners whereas wife woman women young Zaire