Adolescents and War How Youth Deal with Political Violence

by Barber, Brian K

• ISBN13: 9780195343359
• ISBN10: 0195343352
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-09-04
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Adolescents and War maps much of the real complexity that is war and youths' response to it. The volume confirms the irony that most youth actually deal competently with the burdens of political violence-a reality that by no means absolves our responsibility to study and care for youths in conflict but rather compels sharper, more targeted efforts to know which youth do indeed suffer terribly and what factors equip or buffer others who do not. To this end, the work included in Adolescents and War focuses on salient features of violence, such as type, proximity, duration, and familiarity, and also investigates key mediating and moderating factors, such as social support and the attributed meaning of conflict. Importantly, the work also acknowledges that violence per se is but one feature of war environments and that broader forces associated with economic, ethnic, or political inequities and opportunities that often create and maintain conflict are critical to understanding youth functioning. Finally, Adolescents and War takes culture seriously, noting that a fundamental limitation of the traditional approach to studying violence and its stress effects is the privileging of individual psychological functioning at the expense of understanding that what matters more to most youth has to do with war's impact on their families and societies, with their abilities to retain or regain connections with these groups, and with opportunities to achieve their educational and occupational ambitions in order to consolidate an identity within and contribute to these critical areas of their social and cultural lives. Book jacket.

Table of Contents

Contributors	p. xi
Glimpsing the Complexity of Youth and Political Violence	p. 3
General Treatments of Youth and Political Violence
An Overview of the Empirical Literature on Adolescents and Political Violence	p. 35
War, Military Violence, and Aggressive Development: Child, Family, and Social Preconditions	p. 62
Growing Up in Israel: Lessons on Understanding the Effects of Political Violence on Children	p. 81
Youth Soldiering: An Integrated Framework for Understanding Psychosocial Impact	p. 105
Specifying the Effects of Political Violence
Young People's Perceptions of Political Violence: The Case of Northern Ireland	p. 125
Measuring Adolescent Perceived Support Amidst War and Disaster: The Multi-Sector Social Support Inventory	p. 145
The Effects of Wartime Violence on Young Bosnians' Postwar Behaviors: Policy Contours for the Reconstruction Period	p. 177
Expanding the Scope of Inquiry into Youth and Political Violence
Positive and Negative Psychosocial Functioning after Political Conflict: Examining Adolescents of the First Palestinian Intifada	p. 207
Mozambican Child Soldier Life Outcome Study	p. 238
Tasting the World: Life after Wartime for Bosnian Teens in Chicago	p. 255
Making Sense and No Sense of War: Issues of Identity and Meaning in Adolescents' Experience with Political Conflict	p. 281
Conclusion
Moving Forward with Research on Adolescents and Political Violence	p. 315
Index	p. 323
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