Social Cohesion Governance: Legal Aid Strategies in Rwanda

• In Event: 20481 - Section on Sociology of Development Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 4. States and Governance

Abstract

In the transition after collective violence, states work to rebuild and repair the social fabric by promoting legal institutions and fostering peaceful relationships. This article uses the case of legal aid in post-genocide Rwanda to develop the concept of moral visions of social cohesion as a bundle of cognitive beliefs for social relationships that prioritize communal wellbeing. These moralized beliefs are explicitly communicated through the strategies legal aid providers use to manage ordinary cases brought forth by vulnerable people. Using ethnographic and interview data with legal aid providers at legal aid clinics throughout Rwanda, this article identifies two strategies for how legal aid providers communicate moral visions of social cohesion in their management of cases in the context of an overburdened court system. First, legal aid providers orient people to the moralized beliefs about ways of being through community awareness raising initiatives and extra-legal obligations that promote peaceful relations. Second, legal aid providers stall cases from going to court by counseling expectations to match narratives of forgiveness and reconciliation. Stalling cases from reaching the courts alleviates the overburdened court system through attempts at managing emotional expectations about the law’s limitations and reminding people of their obligations to communal wellbeing. These findings underscore how traumatic pasts and moralized ideas of communal obligations influence dispute resolution in post-colonial and post-conflict contexts.

Author

• Jacob Caponi, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor