Doctoral Dissertation Research: Youth and Humanitarian Futures in Post-Conflict Societies

Duke University, Durham NC

Investigators

Abstract

Youth in post-conflict societies frequently come to represent two contradicting forces. On the one hand, they represent hope for a more peaceful future. On the other hand, because there is frequently large-scale unemployment, particularly among young men, youth may also personify anxiety about a return to conflict. The research supported by this award, which trains a graduate student in methods of scientific data collection and analysis, explores how young people navigate the limits and possibilities of post-conflict life and the multiple interventions that are designed to help them do so. Previous research has emphasized how peace-building projects transform social life under the expectation of peace-after-war. But young people looking at their own futures, rarely see such a clean break with the past. When governmental and non-governmental intervention programs attempt to make young people "productive" in the aftermath of violence, what exactly does that entail? And how do youth both within and outside of such programs make sense of their social position as marginal? Answering these questions has important implications for both security and development in post-conflict situations worldwide, including at smaller and more local scales in the United States. Duke University anthropology doctoral candidate, Matthew Sebastian, under the supervision of Dr. Charles Piot, will pursue the research through16 months of ethnographic fieldwork on how young people experience and respond to vulnerability and security in post-conflict northern Uganda. He has chosen this site because Uganda, where more than three-quarters of the population is under thirty, offers a sharper view of how these transformations take place in real time than could be obtained in the U.S. He will collect data with multiple ethnographic methods, including participant observation, interviews, focus groups, and mapping techniques. He has chosen three key sites for the research: (1) securitized spaces where young men and women work as armed guards; (2) a local nongovernmental organization that works to reintegrate formerly incarcerated youth; and (3) a local governmental initiative that is designed to combat youth idleness. These data will allow him to evaluate the carry-over of humanitarian and other interventions in the everyday lives of young people and whether or not they succeed in improving the lives of youth and securing contemporary society and long-term peace. Findings will help to develop new theories of how post-conflict situations can have sustained peaceful outcomes. They will also be of interest to policy makers concerned to assure security after hostilities cease.