Adolescents and War How Youth Deal with Political Violence

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.