Save (us from) the children: trauma, Palestinian childhood, and the production of governable subjects

Abstract

Since the Second Intifada, trauma relief has served as the primary justification for a range of international humanitarian aid projects targeting Palestinian children and youth. Such humanitarian aid projects presume that the default response to violence is trauma, and that trauma left untreated will lead to aggression and violence. Thus, implicit in trauma relief projects targeting Palestinian children is the threat that if they are not properly treated their pent up emotional energy will release itself violently in the future. Moreover, the focus on personal healing through individual self-expression in trauma relief projects serves to depoliticize the context in which violence occurs, transforming the occupation into a set of symptoms to be treated. Likewise, the focus on individual trauma forecloses other possible responses to violence, including empowerment and resistance. Drawing on participant observer research with youth-oriented NGOs in Palestine, as well as with Palestinian children in a West Bank refugee camp, this research seeks to better understand the role of international NGOs in producing particular forms of childhood political subjectivity, and how children themselves variously perform and transform such discursive constructions of Palestinian childhood.

Narrating hope and resistance: A critical analysis of sources of agency among Palestinian children living under military violence

“…The present analysis of the self‐characterization narratives of Palestinian children reveals abundant sources of functioning, coping abilities, and agency in the face of adversity (Marshall, ; Veronese, Pepe, Jaradah, Al‐Murannak, & Hamdouna, ). The results of this preliminary exploration on children's sources of agency suggest that the environment in which they live plays a crucial role in shaping children's suffering and reactions to war, occupation, and ongoing violence.…”

“…Social constructionist approaches emphasize the importance of culture and relational contexts in shaping individual identities through processes “by which people come to describe, explain or otherwise account for the world in which they live” (Gergen, , p. 266). We thus set out to explore domains that foster or suppress agency across Palestinian children's ecology (Gilligan, , ; Marshall, , ).…”

Constructing Impossibility: Israeli State Discourses about Palestinian Child Labour

“…Morrison, 2015). Yet, several more recent studies (see Akesson, 2014aAkesson, ,b, 2015Denov and Akesson, 2013;Marshall, 2013Marshall, , 2014Viterbo, 2012) provide a desperately needed multidisciplinary analysis of Palestinian childhood. Varying in terms of method and frames of analysis, these studies all display how Palestinian children are both more susceptible to the harm and hardships caused by the occupation, and yet remain resilient and are able to challenge these excises.…”

Protecting children in a situation of ongoing conflict: Is resilience sufficient as the end product?

“…[13] questions whether the focus of these programmes, like those of many other humanitarian actors working in Palestine, serves to depoliticize the context in which the conflict is occurring, transforming the ongoing occupation into a series of symptoms to be treated and/or overcome. He contends that many of the interventions perceive these children as "at risk" populations for radicalization and that many programmes work to protect against Palestinian children, rather protect the children themselves.…”