Play is important in development, especially in contexts of political violence, instability, and limited resources (Hyder, 2005). One group of scholars pointed out that for adolescents, their “‘toys’ are world affairs” (Winnicott et al., 1989, p. 62). As though agreeing with this claim, participants in our study across the former Yugoslavia indicated in numerous ways that they were ready to play. These young people know that world affairs are serious and deadly, but with support they are ready to consider how life could be better. Youth across the former Yugoslavia use discourse critically and creatively to respond to political violence in the research workshop and maybe for their own purposes. As in the drawing in Figure 7.1, participants generated novel meanings in their activities. “Peace through education” is an intriguing idea related to the workshop, although the research purpose was to learn from participants rather than to teach them.

Analyses in this book show how young people use cultural tools to mediate their understandings of each challenging context and how they fit within it. Participants' uses of activities indicate the promise of a developmental approach that broadens from assuming trauma or deficits to one that invites imagination. We have seen how adolescents and young adults, play, for example, with literature, letters to public officials, and other challenging activities to take advantage of their psychosocial powers to play. Playing imposes a sense of order in chaotic environments.

MANY WAYS TO TELL A WAR STORY

War influences generations, in large part, through how people talk about it. Having considered the cultural–historical process of script making across a political system, we now explore how individual young people transform national scripts into personal stories. Stories are variations on shared scripts, still social but specific in experience and choice, as expressed in the youth drawing in Figure 6.1. Although not asked to talk or write about war, some participants chose to do so, albeit in very different ways that provide a segue for discussing how young people define themselves in the inescapable shadow of political violence.

Consistent with the “tensions abound” script, 22-year-old Diana narrates a conflict in her hometown of Sarajevo in BiH. In this brief story, Diana foregrounds the war and its consequences as influencing “all Sarajevo.” As narrator, Diana embodies the tension, “it is very sad to see …” and implies her view that the monument should be “for all children from all Sarajevo.” Although not explicitly about herself, Diana's story presents a self-image. She expresses the local emotional context with comments about sadness, tensions, and feelings of being used.

This announcement, created by a group of four 15- to 17-year-olds working together in Croatia, offers insights about the role of participation in human development. As discussed in Chapter 2, designing a survey for other youth across the former Yugoslavia was an activity to promote connection and reflection from increasing positions of youth power. Employing skills of critical reflection, adolescents' ongoing development involves participating for the benefit of others as well as themselves. Increasingly complex collaborative activities can support that development.

Figure 5.1 and the accompanying invitation to complete a youth survey illustrate how participants in the DSTY workshop communicated, in this case magnanimously, with “youth of the world” to “fill out our survey” and “allow us to find out what you would like to change in your community.” Like other participants creating their own surveys across the political-violence system, these teenagers appeal directly – “we” are asking “you” – no abstraction or passive expression here! Choosing uppercase letters, they emphasize their enthusiasm. These friends converse among themselves about what they would like to know from the children of their parents' former adversaries and how they should ask such questions.

When the nation itself struggles for identity and political stability, those in power exert pressure on citizens to express certain ideas and not others. Pressure to speak in ways that justify a war or prove that the country is moving beyond a violent past, for example, may affect the powerless in society, including young people and minorities, because they have not been privy to decisions governing these discourses. As discussed in Chapter 3, scripts by young people narrating conflicts among adults organize mundane events consistent with societal circumstances. Young people have the right to critique violence in their society, yet it is in just such circumstances that critique is dangerous and narrating becomes a cunning enterprise. With the understanding that youth, like nations, can use story-telling, in part, to manage their relations in society, the DSTY research workshop includes a fiction-writing activity (see Figure 2.6). In this story, Moira, a 19-year-old in Croatia, played with a political script:

When writing a letter to a public official, Visnja, a young woman whose life has been defined by war, echoes sentiments expressed by many other young people growing up during and after political violence across the world.

Comments like Visnja's implore those of us who work with young people to learn more about how they perceive environments of armed conflict and its aftermath. Toward that end, the goal of the research discussed in this book was to interact with young people involved in practical activities to gain insights about the development of individuals and society. With an innovative theoretical approach, we ask, “How do young people growing up in political violence understand their plight?”

In spite of our advances, civilization at the beginning of the 21st century continues to be characterized by political violence, which is experienced by increasing numbers of young people (Barber, 2009; Boyden, 2009).

This chapter presents a practical research design to learn about young people's experiences of political violence and transition. The Dynamic Story-Telling by Youth (DSTY) research workshop involves young people aged 12 to 27 across four countries resulting from the recent wars to learn about how they interact with the circumstances where they find themselves. Before discussing this theory-based research design, I present vignettes based on fieldnotes, project archives, and reports to offer insights about the workshop settings. These vignettes focus on the workshops, which occurred in the context of community participation, like that pictured in Figure 2.1 and as appropriate to urban as well as rural settings.

SERBIA, AUGUST

It's a Saturday in August when 31 young people could have been picnicking near the river, sitting with their friends at a café, or helping out at home. Instead, these young people came looking curious, if not enthusiastic, to former government buildings to participate in a workshop eliciting youth voices and to communicate with other youth across the region. Recruited through an NGO active since the war in positive social change, the youth gathered in now-underused buildings in what was the capital of Yugoslavia when the participants were young children. The research workshop is led in their language by a young Serbian man now studying for a Ph.D. in the United States and a local educator, with assistance from two other young adults living in Belgrade.

SUMMARY OF THE PUBLIC STORY IN THE UNITED STATES

The public story for the workshop revolves around the contentious nature of policies and perspectives related to immigration, especially illegal immigration, to the United States after 9/11. The catalytic event for youth activism related to these issues was a game created, publicized, and enacted by the Young Republicans at New York University. Students who were opposed to the game and the views it represented at their university organized a demonstration and teach-in to expose the game. Organizers of the protest against the “Catch an Illegal Immigrant” game invited university officials, professors, and student leaders representing a range of perspectives on the issue. News sources used as resources for our public-story activity included comments by those participants in the demonstration, as well as by several people in the crowd. After reading the story, participants in the DSTY workshop were invited to discuss their views about the various participants in the demonstration.

SUMMARY OF THE PUBLIC STORY IN CROATIA

The public story for the workshop revolves around the contentious issue of tightening controls on the public media, especially electronic media, in the country, which is at odds with progress toward democracy and entrance to the EU (Goehring, 2007). The catalytic event for youth activism related to these issues was the expulsion of one of the first female members of the national board of media policy, which raised issues of social inclusion as well as renewed government control of the media.

As we hear in these comments by two teenagers who have grown up in the shadow of political violence, their generation is aware of the past and its legacies. These brief quotes mention many details that young people in easier situations may not notice: “consequences of the war,” “the influence of the church interfering with the state affairs,” youth responsibility for the future (“some things do depend on us”), and their capacity to contribute to the benefit of society (“we sometimes have ideas that would be good for all people”). These reflections echo the letter we read by Visnja in the Preface, pointing out, ironically, that youth perspectives are usually ignored: “Who would be open to listening to the ‘complaints of youth’ and take them seriously?” On the other hand, those in power are stymied about how to create a future: “The old guard politicians are still shaking their heads, and they tell us ‘it will be better’. … Yeah, right!” Scholars have contributed information about children and youth as the objects of study in situations of political violence, but the literature has offered little from the perspectives of young people themselves.

These narratives by 20-year-olds growing up in very different circumstances of a political-violence system are living histories. What these narratives have in common is that they bring the past into present circumstances, in the one case as “the Homeland war” intrudes on the present because “adults find it difficult to forget the past” and in the other as a fight in public erupts because of “the unsolved situation from the past.” The young authors go beyond mere description to explain the effects of such intrusions. According to Feniks, “we shouldn't forget the past,” but focusing on it too much is a problem that “can never be solved.” In the second narrative, Aska connects emotionally: “[W]e all got scared,” as “the unsolved situation from the past” continues to present dangers like fighting and someone brandishing a knife on public transportation.