'Winning Life' and the Discpline of Death at Iwawa Island

Simon Turner; Rose Løvgren

doi:10.1080/00141844.2017.1373687

'Winning Life' and the Discpline of Death at Iwawa Island

Simon Turner, Rose Løvgren

SAXO-Institute - Archaeology, Ethnology, Greek & Latin, History

Abstract

This article analyses Iwawa, a rehabilitation centre for ‘delinquent’ young men in Rwanda. Like prisons, detention centres and refugee camps elsewhere, Iwawa is both a place of nurture and abandonment; of improving life and disallowing it. We argue that in order to grasp these tensions, we might pay attention to the role of death in disciplining those who are confined. A common way for these young men to address their experience was to say that they had to ‘win life’, and that those who did not win life would often die. Death as a possibility animates life in the camp and explains how the camp is at once a place of abandonment and improvement. The possibility of death also creates hierarchies in the camp between those who win and those who loose; those who become ideal developmental subjects of the Rwandan state and those who do not.

Original language	English
Journal	Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology
Pages (from-to)	27-10
ISSN	0014-1844
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2017.1373687
Publication status	Published - 1 Jan 2019

Keywords

Faculty of Social Sciences
Rwanda
Camps
Confinement
Death
Animals
discipline

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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10.1080/00141844.2017.1373687

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title = "'Winning Life' and the Discpline of Death at Iwawa Island",

abstract = "This article analyses Iwawa, a rehabilitation centre for {\textquoteleft}delinquent{\textquoteright} young men in Rwanda. Like prisons, detention centres and refugee camps elsewhere, Iwawa is both a place of nurture and abandonment; of improving life and disallowing it. We argue that in order to grasp these tensions, we might pay attention to the role of death in disciplining those who are confined. A common way for these young men to address their experience was to say that they had to {\textquoteleft}win life{\textquoteright}, and that those who did not win life would often die. Death as a possibility animates life in the camp and explains how the camp is at once a place of abandonment and improvement. The possibility of death also creates hierarchies in the camp between those who win and those who loose; those who become ideal developmental subjects of the Rwandan state and those who do not.",

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AB - This article analyses Iwawa, a rehabilitation centre for ‘delinquent’ young men in Rwanda. Like prisons, detention centres and refugee camps elsewhere, Iwawa is both a place of nurture and abandonment; of improving life and disallowing it. We argue that in order to grasp these tensions, we might pay attention to the role of death in disciplining those who are confined. A common way for these young men to address their experience was to say that they had to ‘win life’, and that those who did not win life would often die. Death as a possibility animates life in the camp and explains how the camp is at once a place of abandonment and improvement. The possibility of death also creates hierarchies in the camp between those who win and those who loose; those who become ideal developmental subjects of the Rwandan state and those who do not.

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'Winning Life' and the Discpline of Death at Iwawa Island

Abstract

Keywords

UN SDGs

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