Abstract
These narratives, by adolescents living in the aftermath of the 1990 s wars that fractured the former Yugoslavia, express adolescents’ focus on issues in their now diverse societies. The generation of 12-21-year olds who were babies or young children during acute phases of war is growing up with its consequences. The material and symbolic remnants of war across each context become embedded in adolescents’ narratives of their everyday lives and, thus, their development toward adulthood. In his narrative, for example, Rudy in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) focuses on tensions among adults in public life, tensions also noticed by his peers who explain that these tensions result from “problems from the past” and serve as “stress releases.” Characteristic of her ex-Yugoslavian country of Serbia, I.S., in contrast, focuses on divisions in her society, in this case between the “last century’s mentality” and the implied new one which allows for argumentation. Feniks, like most of his Croatian peers, uses this observation of conflict among adults to mention future possibility, while Krusko, a refugee of mass destruction in Bosnia, turns nostalgically to the past and her family’s ongoing difficulties. In this chapter, I present a case study with these and other adolescents positioned differently around a war to explain how they use narrating to mediate development of individuals in society.
It happened at the crossroads when two drivers got out of their cars and, for some reason, started an argument (probably one of them violated traffic regulations). They stopped the traffic and nearly started to fight physically. The other drivers were yelling and cursing from their cars. A young man interfered and made the two men stop arguing. Personally, I was appalled by the incident and I was particularly irritated because they prevented the others from moving.
(By Rudy, 15, BiH)
The problem emerged when a neighbor appropriated half of the street - remnants of the last century’s mentality. The neighbor is an ex-cop who still thinks that he has the power. There has been a lot of argumentation, but the status quo has prevailed.
(By I.S., 17, Serbia)
The conflict was about the Homeland war. My opinion is that we shouldn’t forget the past but that we must look forward to the future. The adults find it difficult to forget certain things from the past. This problem can never be solved because it exists subconsciously.
(By Feniks, 20, Croatia)
My mom and uncle had a conflict. My mom was inviting my uncle to move to America but he was torn because he had to leave his elderly parents. He ended up moving anyway but with much difficulty. My uncle felt that he was abandoning his parents and my mom felt guilty for being pushy, but she thought it was too good of an opportunity to miss. He moved here but he still regrets leaving his family, we all do.
(By Krusko, 18, United States)
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- 1.
To appear in K. McLean & M. Pasupathi (Eds.) Narrative development in adolescence. New York: Springer. Write to cdaiute@gc.cuny.edu with comments and suggestions.
- 2.
Political scientists have offered measures of political stability in terms of progress toward democracy of 22 former Soviet states, including the Western Balkan countries (Goehring, 2007). Democracy scores from 1 to 7 with 1-2 indicating consolidated democracy, which embodies “the best policies and practices of liberal democracy” (p. 19), and 6-7 indicating a consolidated authoritarian regime, which characterizes “closed societies in which dictators prevent political competition and pluralism are responsible for wide-spread violations of basic political, civil, and human rights” (p. 23). Factors considered include national democratic governance, electoral process, civil society, independent media, local democratic governance, judicial framework and independence, and corruption (Goehring, 2007, p. 10). Summary scores cover the period from 2006 to 2007, the data collection period for this study. Lower scores indicate better match with democratic practices. Western Balkan states involved in the study discussed indicate slight improvements in BiH (4.07-4.04) and Serbia (3.71 to 3.68) and decreases in Croatia (3.71-3.75). Serbia’s score improved primarily because of improvements to its constitution and electoral process; BiH’s score improved for advances in police reform, civil society initiatives, and constitutional reform; Croatia’s democracy score because of a weakening of freedom of the press. Although changes may seem slight, the rigorous nature of the Freedom House process and the small range of scores 1-6 assure the meaningful nature of these changes.
- 3.
Having passed all but the final step in the “stabilization and association agreement” process, Croatia has the status of candidate member to the EU with expected entry in 2010 or 2011. In spite of not having met some requirements of the post-war period, in particular turning over war criminals wanted by the International Tribunal, Serbia has recently been offered to begin the “stabilization and association agreement” process, with an expected entry into the EU by 2013. Because of economic and political issues like those described above and below, Bosnia is not yet in line to begin a process for entry in the EU.
- 4.
Six months after data collection, the situation in Serbia changed considerably with international recognition for their stemming violent responses to Kosovo’s independence and for arresting war criminals.
- 5.
The heart of the research was a 5-hour workshop as part of a curricular or extra-curricular social studies, language, social service, or computer program. Workshop activities were designed to engage high school and college students in a variety of communication and inquiry skills related to post-war development, migration history, social inclusion, and the collective development of individuals and society. The three narrative conflict writing activities are embedded in activity 1. Completion of “Youth Perspectives on Society” Survey – What are we experiencing? This survey includes 22 open-ended and likert scale prompts for demographic information, including selection of a pseudonym to be used on all written materials, place of residence, age, etc.; requests for participants’ involvement in extra-curricular activities, such as community centers, sports and arts activities, social service, etc.; requests for stories about conflicts in daily life; participants’ assessments of the problems in the society, the positive aspects of the society; and a letter, written to an official about how adults in their society can help youth prepare for a positive future. Subsequent activities in the workshop (reported elsewhere) involved discussing results of the survey (#1) completed by other youth, discussion of a public story about youth response to a recent conflict event, creating, and responding to an original youth survey.
- 6.
The international situation made it difficult to involve exactly the same number of participants across sites, as recruitment was dependent on representative connections and contexts in each context.
- 7.
Participants in other settings have, for example, indicated that they found the activities to be interesting, that they were “surprised to get results from other responders to the same survey,” and that creating their own survey to be taken by other youth made them feel “powerful.” Those youth also offered suggestions for improving one activity, which we have done.
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Acknowledgments
The author thanks the numerous organizations and individuals involved at various stages of this project, especially Group Most, Suncokret, Prism Research, RACCOON, Dragan Popadic, Luka Lucic, Maja Turniski, Dino Djepa, Lejla Kadiz, Vicky Barrios, Nikolina Knezevic, Dean Valutec, and the gracious young people who shared their experience and wisdom in research workshops. Funding from the National Council of Teachers of English, the United States Institute of Peace, and the Graduate Center, City University of New York made the research reported on in this article possible. Gratitude also to the Harriman Institute at Columbia University School of International Affairs, the Center for Place Culture and Politics, and the Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center for providing interdisciplinary forums that enriched this work.
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Daiute, C. (2010). Critical Narrating by Adolescents Growing Up in War: Case Study Across the Former Yugoslavia. In: McLean, K., Pasupathi, M. (eds) Narrative Development in Adolescence. Advancing Responsible Adolescent Development. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-89825-4_11
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