A place for individuals : positive growth in Rwanda
Abstract
This article introduces the Rwandan Stories of Change research project, and uses data collected jointly with the Aegis Trust to argue for the value of in-depth studies on individual Rwandans’ positive growth. It seeks to explore the place of individual growth in discussions of post-genocide Rwanda by examining the communitarian culture and policies of present day Rwanda. The article uses discourse analysis of a sample of testimonies to analyse indicators of individual growth alongside an assessment of collective resources (political, cultural and therapeutic) to ensure the broader cultural context of growth is attended to. The article investigates what connections might be found between community reconciliation processes and individual growth, and seeks to question how the two are related. Finally, the article argues that though individual stories are more difficult to locate and articulate, efforts must be made to facilitate their dissemination in order to provide a comprehensive, forward-looking discourse of post-genocide adaptation.
Citation
Grayson , H L 2017 , ' A place for individuals : positive growth in Rwanda ' , Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies , vol. 3 , no. 2-4 . https://doi.org/10.1080/23277408.2017.1374052
Publication
Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
2327-7408Type
Journal article
Rights
© 2017 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Description
This work was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council grant AH/M004155/2.Collections
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