How Effective Coping Should Not Be Confused with Resilience (And How Coping May Itself Contribute to Perpetuating Cycles of Violence)

The coping mechanism of la debrouille serves as an essential tool in young people's efforts to deal with their experiences of violence at an individual level. The young people who participated in this research were adept at using various individual coping mechanisms depending on the situation they faced at any given time, revealing their capacity for pragmatic appraisal and the ability to discern the most relevant action in a particular situation.

The varied repertoire of coping mechanisms available to young people living in conditions of adversity is considered by resilience theory:

there is a substantial range of effective coping mechanisms (or psychological defences), that the coping style that works best for one sort of stress experience may not work equally well with a different kind of adversity, and that there are substantial individual differences in the coping styles with which people are most comfortable... [S]tress and adversity cannot usefully be viewed as passive experiences that simply impinge on people; instead, they involve an active process by which people deal with their environments. On the whole it has appeared advantageous for people to have a varied repertoire of coping mechanisms in order to deal with the range of adaptive responses required by contrasting life challenges. (Rutter 2000, pp. 652-653)

By exploring the kinds of life challenges facing young people in the Kivus today, this chapter has shown how young people cope at the individual level with the structures of violence. The narratives reveal how young people are merely coping - more or less effectively - given the constraints of their environments and the opportunities with which they are presented. The forms of rationality demonstrated through young people's coping mechanisms exemplify what applied economic research terms “bounded rationality,” a concept elaborated by Herbert Simon (1957) which considers how the human capacity for rational choice is necessarily limited by the complexity and constraints of the environment in which choices are made.

Within the structures of violence, definitive determinations of whether or not an individual is coping effectively are not always possible. Recalling the definition of coping as being able to deal effectively with difficulty, a lack of coping would mean not dealing effectively. Yet because the structures of violence are so powerful and all pervasive in the Kivus, effectiveness can usually only be exogenously deter­mined. Young people may be able to deal with the situation they are facing as effectively as possible - and thus they can be considered to be coping - but without being able to change or influence the structures in which they live, then the effectiveness of coping is ambiguous. For example, it is clear that Richard, through his impressive capacities for la debrouille, has been able to cope effectively when compared to his peers. He has demonstrated his intelligence and adaptability and has consequently managed to support his family and build a relatively successful carpentry business. Yet despite Richard's constant efforts, the environment in which he lives severely limits the possibility of emerging from the conditions of rural poverty and political violence.

The complex processes involved in navigating the structures of violence mean that the results of any given coping response can be equivocal and changeable over time. Young people will sometimes be able to cope with their situation more effectively than at other times. Safia, who was supporting herself, her children, and her younger sisters through transactional sex work, was proud of her ability to care for her family and would continue to make the necessary sacrifices to be sure that their needs were met. Yet the choices involved in Safia's coping processes created significant new risks: she had become pregnant against her will and she was constantly at risk of contracting a sexually transmitted disease or of being harmed by her clients. La debrouille for Safia entailed little more than a short-term survival tactic that allowed her to cope as best as she could with her situation in the present, yet which offered few prospects for an improved future. In these ways, it can be seen how the capacities for young people to effectively cope with violence in the short term might become maladaptive in the long term. The potential for maladap- tation is considered in resilience theory:

Although there are certainly a few styles of coping that are usually maladaptive, it has not proved easy to come up with a valid differentiation between effective and ineffective coping styles. (Rutter 2000, p. 653)

The extent of maladaptation can only be evaluated through long-term study, yet it is evident that for Safia, the risk of HIV or other sexually transmitted diseases is part of her everyday, as is the risk of becoming pregnant and thus further increasing the strains of material and emotional responsibilities she faces as a mother and head of household. For Vainquer, the maladaptation associated with his submission and defeat means that his aspirations to succeed as an artist have waned, his sense of well-being has diminished, and his expectations of what he is able to achieve in his life have reduced.

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