Stigma management, group interaction, and cultural trauma: a Rwanda-Germany comparison

This article examines the relationship between the cultural trauma of perpetrators as a culture structure, the experience of stigma, stigma management, and intervening group processes. It does so comparatively for post-genocide Rwanda and post-Holocaust Germany. Both Rwandan interviewees and German biographers report about interactive situations in which intra- and intergenerational sets of actors-faced with cultural trauma-manage stigma or spoiled identities through practices of silencing, denying, and acknowledging in the context of family and friendship circles. In both cases, they do so in group interactions, generating group styles that partially set their narratives of the past apart from collective representations. Yet they operate in different national contexts, with consequences for group styles and stigma management. In Rwanda-different from Germany-(1) public, government-led acknowledgment set in immediately after the end of the genocide, (2) under authoritarian rule, (3) by members of the victimized group, (4) in a different historical era, (5) under distinct cultural norms, and (6) in a setting in which perpetrator and victim groups co-exist in day-to-day interactions. This comparative analysis advances insights into questions about cultural trauma, group styles, and stigma management.