Social and Political Fractures after Wars

The Role of Youth Violence in Cambodia and Guatemala

The conclusion of wars is generally seen as the most important step towards a reduction of violence. In reality, however, many peace processes turn out to be fragile, even those, which were regarded as successful. Post-war societies have multifaceted problems. With regard to this, it is the aim of the project to contribute to an explanation of differences in the incident of violence in post-war societies by focusing on adolescents rather than a backslide into war, as most of the literature does. So far, the readiness of youth to apply violence has mainly been discussed in the context of cities in industrialised countries. It was only recently that the related issues (cause, forms of organisation, responses in society) started to be analysed in a comparative inter-regional approach and in the context of globalisation. Until now, however, only individual studies have placed youth violence in the context of war and post-war situations despite the fact that adolescent men are regarded as central actors in the debate on the so-called “new wars”.

The project operates at the interface of both research fields. The questions pursued aim at the exploration of the concurrence of actors (youth) and structure (the threefold transformation process democratization, market reforms and pacification). To this end, in terms of concept and theory development, the project’s comparative analysis will identify the intersections between war, war dynamics and war effects on the one hand and post-war violence on the other and systematically relate them to the challenges posed by social change. The limitation of the analysis to two case studies (Guatemala with a high incident of violence, Cambodia with a low incident of violence) allows a qualitative analysis of the processes of transformation und a focus on changes in societal structures and the actors within them. The comparison of different regional and cultural contexts aims at approaching underlying issues beyond culturally bound characteristics.

In a first step, the case studies will analyse actors and forms of youth violence. In a second step, the explanations of youth violence will be examined regarding their plausibility. Furthermore, the specific problems youth face in the threefold transformation process will be explored in order to establish correlations between youth violence and social conditions. In this context, the project addresses the opportunities of participation youth have in the political system and the formal economy. Here, the effects of a socialisation in war times on value orientation and the question of how violence is legitimised play a central role.

Even though generalised findings on the role of youth violence cannot be expected within the scope of the project, it will, however, develop research strategies and hypotheses, which then can be examined for and adapted to other countries and regions.