Human Development and Political Violence

Abstract

Human Development and Political Violence presents an innovative approach to research and practice with young people growing up in the context of political violence. Based on developmental theory, this book explains and illustrates how children and youth interact with environments defined by war, armed conflict, and the aftermath of displacement, poverty, political instability, and personal loss. The case study for this inquiry is a research workshop in three countries and a refugee community of the former Yugoslavia, where youth aged 12 to 27 participated in activities designed to promote their development. The theory-based Dynamic Story-Telling by Youth workshop engaged participants as social historians and critics sharing their experiences via narratives, evaluations of society, letters to public officials, debates, and collaborative inquiries. Analyses of these youth perspectives augment archival materials and researcher field notes to offer insights about developmental strategies for dealing with the threats and opportunities of war and major political change. Findings indicate that young people interact with such situations in normative ways.

‘And So They Ordered Me to Kill a Person’: Conceptualizing the Impacts of Child Soldiering on the Development of Moral Agency

“…In many respects, the propositions outlined in this paper are in line with recent scholarship that challenges the one-sided view of war-affected youths, including those in the role of combatants, as helpless victims, replacing it with a view of young people as active participants in their sociopolitical realities and as continuously engaged in making sense of these realities and of the roles they themselves play [e.g., Barber, 2009;Boothby, Strang, & Wessells, 2006;Daiute, 2010;Franks, 2011;Hammack, 2011;Wessells, 2006]. Critically, however, it is important to recognize that youths' capacity to make sense of their own experiences is not necessarily associated, exclusively and in an uncomplicated fashion, with optimal growth, competence, and resilience Wainryb, 2010].…”

Youths Making Sense of Political Conflict: Considering Protective and Maladaptive Possibilities

“…In a book entitled Human Development and Political Violence, Colette Daiute [2010] also argues for a fuller consideration of youths' own perspectives on political conflict. Her analysis is concerned specifically with adolescents and young adults in the former Yugoslavia.…”

“…Echoing Barber's [2009a] arguments, Daiute's [2010] volume illustrates the distinct themes that come up in the narrative accounts of young people from BosniaHerzegovina, Serbia, Croatia, as well as a refugee Bosnian community in the United States -all implicated, albeit in different positions, in one and the same political conflict. But in our view, the novelty of Daiute's contribution lies in her providing a glimpse into how most adolescents are also capable of considering conflicts from multiple, and even competing, perspectives.…”

“…Whereas the research summarized in Daiute's [2010] volume insinuates the potential for risk in youths' inability to consider war-related experiences in ways that acknowledge multiple perspectives on the same events, the risks associated with the construction of certain kinds of meanings are at the very heart of a volume by Phillip Hammack [2011], Narrative and the Politics of Identity: The Cultural Psychology of Israeli and Palestinian Youth . Hammack's book deals with life stories of adolescents in Israel and Palestine before and after their participation in intervention programs designed to promote the construction of a common identity imparted through intergroup contact.…”

“…Hammack's book deals with life stories of adolescents in Israel and Palestine before and after their participation in intervention programs designed to promote the construction of a common identity imparted through intergroup contact. Even as Hammack, like Daiute [2010], explores how youths engage with their own culture's scripts, his position in regard to the developmental consequences of adolescents' meaning-making is less unequivocally optimistic. It is important to note that Hammack's focus is on the development of identity, rather than meaning-making per se.…”