His Street: "Investing In Others"

Analysis: Beginning to Identify Practices

This week I’m trying to focus by looking at how our government responds or fails to respond to genocide. I’m trying to identify practices – doings and saying and/or shared understandings and while those terms are still quite new to me, several of the articles listed below address the issue of Practices of Silence, Avoidance, Aversion, etc. that contribute to the development of our (US) governmental Foreign and Defense policies.

Now, by taking into consideration Tracy’s note about practices being fallen, and therefore being “good” at one point in creation, I’m not finished really processing through this all. So some of these ideas may seem like a stretch, but I’ll narrow it down in time. But my overall understanding of this is that if social problems are the result or consequence of structures, then by identifying practices that give rise to those structures, in coming weeks I hope to better identify what those structures are. Right now it is rather loose and/or obvious, like structures of government, but I plan to dig deeper than that. The most specific example of a practice I’ve found, from the perspective of corruption in Africa (and Tracy I seriously note your admonishment that we are careful to look at both how the West contributes to this and Africa) is the issue of systematic rape. On the surface level, it is rape, but for the purpose of this study, it is the practice of sex, corrupted.

So in consciously not focusing on our government alone, several articles address practices of the Sudanese and Rwandan government officials and rebel groups that contribute to the rise of corruption through various practices. The most egregious of which is the structure of systematic rape used in genocide – rape being the practice of sex corrupted. I hope to identify more in the coming weeks.

Since corruption is such a massive and layered problem, I am beginning to understand how identifying the practices and narrowing our focus to smaller, possibly more manageable issues, we can identify action points for the church. And by identifying action points, the church can then participate in God’s work of redemption.

What follows are sources that point to fallen structures and/or practices, but I admit I need a bit of time to really flesh out which falls in to which category.


http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people2/Power/power-con0.html

Interview with Samantha Power, author, “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide. An interview with Powers regarding the Structure of Silence shaping US Foreign policy regarding genocide in Rwanda and throughout history.


http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=5227

An article highlighting the international debate over whether or not to call crisis in Sudan genocide and failure of international community powers (including US) to approve the new permanent International Crime Court which will hold the authority to convict perpetrators of genocide and other war crime cases – including those involving the US. Practice of Aversion and Avoidance.


http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/evil/interviews/gourevitch.html

Frontline interview with Philip Gourevitch.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16001-2004Jun29.html

We Want to Make a Light Baby – Washington Post article
Dicussion of systematic rape used as a tool by Janjaweed militia men in ethnic cleansing.

http://www.africaaction.org/newsroom/index.php?op=read&documentid=634&type=14&issues=1152

Africa Action: Africa Action Talking Points on How to Stop Genocide in Sudan
Defines genocide in general, in relation to Darfur, and how US government fails to act.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L07394830.htm

Bandits beat, whip aid workers in Sudan's Darfur, Opheera McDoom. Self-explanatory. The Sudanese government is working to deter food delivery to refugees in Chad and other displaced people in the Sudan. I’m looking at this to identify some practice, but I can’t fully identify it right now.

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/sudan/thestory.html

Sudan the Quick and the Terrible, Amy Costello. Frontline video news report emphasizing political crisis and addressing internal potential sources of corruption on Sudanese government denial of involvement in Janjaweed terror attacks.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/sudan.html

Sudan Country Analysis Brief
Information about oil reserves and US sanctions imposed on the Sudan due to civil war. Human Rights orgs accuse Sudanese government of using oil profits to finance genocide.

Books/Articles:

We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch.

Documenting stories of victims interviewed by author and the authors account of his post-genocide visits to Rwanda.

“Cloud of Smoke, Pillar of Fire.”

Interesting article by Irving Greenburg in Holocaust : Religious and Philosophical Implications. This is kind of off topic, but addresses that larger issue of the church’s response to genocide by looking at Jewish/Christian responses to the Holocaust. Perhaps useful for later discussions, but I just read it for class and thought it would be useful to our research.

posted by Colleen Yvonne Mae @ 12:26 AM