Constructing the Ideal Parent in Post-Genocide Rwanda : Social Engineering and Informality in Kigali Settlements after Genocide

Abstract: Previous studies of post-genocide Rwanda illutrates how nation-building and the government’s urgency to break with the past results in aims to rearrange society in order to prevent further violence and hostility. Developmental aims are also embedded in the broader project of post-genocide nation-building, adapted to promote a new and improved way of life after the genocide. This thesis examines the local experiences of parents in post-genocide Rwanda, with the specific geographical focus on the capital city of Kigali. Based on an ethnographic data collection from spring 2022, this thesis deals with the local experience of top-down rearrangements among parents in “informal” settlements in Kigali. Governmental perceptions of informality highlight the issue of risk in the urban context of post-genocide Kigali. Characterized by lack of order and formality the neighborhoods are deemed as excluded from the new societal modes and norms in the post-genocide aims of social engineering. This thesis uses the theory social engineering by James Scott (1998) to highlight the top-down measures intended to rearrange the lives of parents in “informal” settlements in Kigali. Additionally, the theoretical perspective of parenting culture is applied in order to explore the targeted regulations of parenting, as a result of government’s special interest in children as “future members of the nation” in a post-genocide context. This thesis shows that parenting culture is especially targeted by top-down regulations as a risk preventing strategy to shape the future of the nation. Working with a bottom-up perspective on top- down measures of social engineering the thesis includes the theoretical perspective of governmentality described by Mitchell Dean (2010) and Tania Murray Li (2007). Through mechanisms of self-regulation and accountability the thesis shows how regulations of parents in “informal” settlements are contested by their lack of ability and willingness to integrate top-down social engineering as meaningful rearrangements in everyday life.