Youths Making Sense of Political Conflict:

It is widely recognized that adolescence is a time of unique adaptability as well as vulnerability. Indeed, the teenage years are often considered to be a distinct developmental period precisely because youths are in the midst of an unfinished process of constructing a sense of themselves in the world. This is equally the case for adolescents whose worlds have been turned upside down, as in the context of war. Nevertheless, research on youths exposed to political violence has rarely focused on the developmental implications of the interplay between adolescents’ capacities for adaptation and their unique vulnerabilities. As such, there is an urgent need to gain a more comprehensive understanding of adolescent development in relation to their experiences of political conflict, and in a way that recognizes the wide-ranging and far-reaching consequences of these events. Typically, past research on youths’ experiences with political conflict has characterized young people as victims of war. As such, studies have largely focused on trauma and the distress that results from their exposure to violence. Indeed, connections between war-related experiences and post-traumatic stress disorder symptomatology are well established and far from surprising [Barenbaum, Ruchkin, & Schwab-Stone, 2004; Betancourt & Khan, 2008]. However, three recent books, including a volume edited by Brian Barber [2009a] as well as books by Colette Daiute [2010] and Phillip Hammack [2011], introduce and underscore the important and more novel proposition that youths are not just victims or passive recipients of warrelated experiences, but rather active participants in these contexts who interpret events through the lens of their own understandings. Indeed, given that young people are in the process of becoming the next adult generation, each volume emphasizes that ignoring their active abilities to adapt and to effect positive social change