Opportunities in Research and Representation
Interviews with (demobilized) child combatants have, however, provided important insights into the different roles children take in armed groups, war’s psychosocial impact, and their own coping mechanisms.
A general view has now emerged among scholars that child combatants are not without agency, even in situations of extreme adversity, and that conscription into armed groups does not necessarily always take place by blunt force (Mcintyre 2004; Denov 2010). Put simply then, children in war may actively negotiate their participation in war. Coercive conscription may be followed by autonomy in other areas of life affected by fighting forces. Alternatively, voluntary enrolment may yet be structurally produced and create little space for agency within a fighting force. And as constructivist thinkers would remind us there is still room for a black box of “unknowns” in between these positions. As James (2007, p. 266) reminds us:childhood research is not simply about making children’s own voices heard in this very literal sense by presenting children’s perspectives. It is also about exploring the nature of the “voice” with which children are attributed, how that voice both shapes and reflects the ways in which childhood is understood, and therefore the discourses within which children find themselves within any society.
Correspondingly there is now a critical academic focus on the social construction of childhoods forged in war (Shepler 2010; Denov 2010; Dupuy and Peters 2010; Jacob 2014; Kim Huynh et al. 2015). Scholarly research on child soldiers has begun to show, amongst other things, the agency of underage combatants even in difficult situations (Peters and Richards 1998; Peters 2004; McIntyre 2005), the gender dimensions of recruitment and participation (Mazurana and McKay 2001), and the historical dimensions of their use (Shepler 2010; Twum-Danso 2003).
Studies have also questioned the assumed universally high levels of posttraumatic stress disorder experienced by war-affected populations, including child soldiers, and discussed vital but underreported evidence of resilience (Bracken and Petty 1998). These discussions and research findings have in turn enabled practitioners to come up with much more informed, tailor-made and participatory approaches when it comes to the demobilization and reintegration of former child soldiers and even the prevention of recruitment. For instance, acknowledging that Palestine children can be politically motivated in their violent struggle against the Israeli occupiers (Hart 2008), rather than being necessarily indoctrinated by Hamas cadres, opens the way for the discussion of more peaceful means of protest. Research has also shown how young people may utilize their experience of war to create opportunities for civic political participation (Blattman 2009, p. 245).Following from this, researchers have turned their attention to hegemonic or viral stereotypes of child soldiers and how particularly barbaric aspects of child soldiering have been exaggerated or sensationalized. For instance, in the case of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda, child testimonies have been extrapolated and recycled amongst agencies and charities until they seem to be bearing truths common to all child soldiers. The voices of girl wives of commanders, subject to detention and rape have also circulated in this way. These stories in turn fuelled the contemporary and unprecedented, global, viral media campaign #Kony 2012 which relied upon an historic and inaccurate collage of LRA atrocities. This complexity represents a critical juncture in studies of child soldiers and as Rosen (2007) has stated, the humanitarian discourse of childhood may be powerfully out of step with reality.
This article will now turn to the presence of the particular and the first person in stories of former child combatants.
It will focus on the period of disarmament and demobilization of child soldiers and the ways in which it brings particular challenges to bear in giving testimony. It is argued that this process itself may require more critical attention than it is currently afforded. In turn, interview material yielded from child soldiers can be used and indeed manipulated to reaffirm conflicting (although not necessarily mutual exclusive) perceptions on underage combatants. Partly this is because the interviewers can be selective in the topics they raise and, more problematically, because of the ability of editors to be selective in the use of child soldier interview extracts. Moreover, the authors suggest that ex-child soldiers may also be responsible for this tension; they are, it will be argued, exceptionally trained in“sensing” what other people want to get from them (e.g., certain answers during an interview). Here, one should not forget that many ex-child soldiers had to develop their wits and streetwise skills to the extreme just to survive.
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