November 29- Research Project Development

On November 29 from 4:30-6:00, Gabe Velez will present his work titled “Peace, Citizenship, and Urban Ecology: Adolescent Meaning-Making of Peace in Bogotá, Colombia”. This workshop will focus on the early-stage, theoretical development of a research paper using raw interview data conducted in Bogotá, Colombia.

For many conflict-ridden countries, peace is invoked as a primary objective of the government and civil society.  As a concept it is tied to development, stability, democracy, and citizenship (Brewer, 2010; Lederach, 1997).  Peace has proliferated in these settings as part of civic discourse and societal  hopes of the future.  While this discourse permeates many aspects of peacebuilding, this focus on a more harmonious future leads to a particular need to promote peace in youth.  Though often overlooked by economic and political elite, these younger generations have the power to shape the trajectory of the larger society through their beliefs and actions (see Del Felice & Wisler, 2007; Gallagher, 2004; McEvoy, 2000; McEvoy-Levy, 2006).  Furthermore, as part of psychological development, adolescents increasingly interact and internalize broader contexts of their society in forming their own identities and ideologies (Erikson, 1968).  These underlying identity processes integrate individual level factors with contextual experiences (Bronfrenbrenner, 1992; Spencer, Dupree, & Hartmann, 1997), resulting in outcomes that can promote stability and democratic stability or to create greater challenges for peacebuilding.

The current study investigates how Colombian adolescents form ideas about citizenship and peace in relation to their experiences of social environments.  The study focuses on youth in Colombia because the country is in the midst of a peace process to end over five decades of internal warfare, and so the situation offers a unique opportunity to explore how these adolescents are interpreting the transitions occurring at the national level.  To investigate this relationship, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 80 youth from 15 different sites across the city, with all participants also completing a standardized survey on perceptions of community environment and trust.  The interviews explored how these youth in Bogota construct concepts of peace and citizenship, while the surveys were used to analyze the emergent qualitative themes in relation to participants’ perceptions of their community and their feelings of security.

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