Youth Participation in Political Violence

Throughout history, young people have been involved in political violence and war; however, the way this involvement is constructed varies dramatically by culture. In the preindustrial world, youth cultures or subcultures that mark and honor violence held complex relationships to the values of the wider community. In the nineteenth-century hunting-and-gathering communities of the Great Plains of the United States, the values of youth reflected the values held by adults. Elsewhere, such as among the Maasai and Samburu of East Africa, elements of youth cultures sometimes embodied opposition to the adult world. Despite these differences, the experiences of youth usually serve as a passageway to assuming normative adult roles within the existing social order. An important shift took place around the beginning of the twentieth century when, at least in part, war and revolution were carried out not just by young fighters but in the name of youth. The emphasis on youth and its transformative power signaled and legitimized the hope of a new social order. Though these wars often harnessed the revolutionary energy of young fighters, when the revolutionary moment became institutionalized, there was often a disjuncture between the values of youth culture and the emerging post-revolutionary norms. However, youth violence is culturally and socially constructed, “youth” as a social category is temporally limited, so its usefulness as the basis of permanent political power is ephemeral. Thus, youth culture and its attachment to violence always remain politically excluded from the hierarchy of power.