War leads not just to widespread death but also to extensive displacement, overwhelming fear, and economic devastation. It weakens social ties, threatens household survival and undermines the family''s capacity to care for its most vulnerable members. Every year it kills and maims countless numbers of young people, undermines thousands of others psychologically and deprives many of the economic, educational, health and social opportunities which most of us consider essential for children''s effective growth and well being.

Based on detailed ethnographic description and on young people''s own accounts, this volume provides insights into children''s experiences as both survivors and perpetrators of violence. It focuses on girls who have been exposed to sexual exploitation and abuse, children who head households or are separated from their families, displaced children and young former combatants who are attempting to adjust to their changed circumstances following the cessation of conflict. In this sense, the volume bears witness to the grim effects of warfare and displacement on the young.

Nevertheless, despite the abundant evidence of suffering, it maintains that children are not the passive victims of conflict but engage actively with the conditions of war, an outlook that challenges orthodox research perspectives that rely heavily on medicalized notions of ''victim'' and ''trauma.''

War leads not just to widespread death but also to extensive displacement, overwhelming fear, and economic devastation. It weakens social ties, threatens household survival and undermines the family's capacity to care for its most vulnerable members. Every year it kills and maims countless numbers of young people, undermines thousands of others psychologically and deprives many of the economic, educational, health and social opportunities which most of us consider essential for children's effective growth and well being.

Based on detailed ethnographic description and on young people's own accounts, this volume provides insights into children's experiences as both survivors and perpetrators of violence. It focuses on girls who have been exposed to sexual exploitation and abuse, children who head households or are separated from their families, displaced children and young former combatants who are attempting to adjust to their changed circumstances following the cessation of conflict. In this sense, the volume bears witness to the grim effects of warfare and displacement on the young.

Nevertheless, despite the abundant evidence of suffering, it maintains that children are not the passive victims of conflict but engage actively with the conditions of war, an outlook that challenges orthodox research perspectives that rely heavily on medicalized notions of 'victim' and 'trauma.'

Acknowledgements
List of Acronyms

Introduction
Jo Boyden and Joanna de Berry

PART I: THE CONTECTS OF WAR

Chapter 1. Separated Children: Care and Support in Context
Gillian Mann

Chapter 2. Cultural Disruption and the Care of Infants in Post-war Mozambique
Victor Igreja

PART II: VULNERABILITY AND RESILIENCE AMONG ADOLESCENT GIRLS

Chapter 3. The Sexual Vulnerability of Adolescent Girls during Civil War in Teso, Uganda
Joanna de Berry

Chapter 4. A Neglected Perspective: Adolescent Girls' Experiences of the Kosovo Conflict of 1999
Aisling Swaine with Thomas Feeny

PART III: WHAT IS A CHILD?

Chapter 5. The Use of Patriarchal Imagery in the Civil War in Mozambique and its Implications for the Reintegration of Child Soldiers
Jessica Schafer

Chapter 6. Girls with Guns: Narrating the Experience of War of FRELIMO's 'Female Detachment'
Harry G. West

Chapter 7. Children, Impunity and Justice: Some Dilemmas from Northern Uganda
Andrew Mawson

PART IV: CHILDREN'S NARRATIVES

Chapter 8. Children in the Grey Spaces Between War and Peace: The Uncertain Truth of Memory Acts
Krisjon Rae Olson

Chapter 9. Beyond Struggle and Aid: Children's Identities in a Palestinian Refugee Camp in Jordan
Jason Hart

PART V: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY AND METHODS

Chapter 10. Researching Young People's Experiences of War: Participatory Methods and the Trauma Discourse in Angola
Carola Eyber and Alastair Ager

Chapter 11. Fluid Research Fields: Studying Excombatant Youth in the Aftermath of the Liberian Civil War
Mats Utas

Chapter 12. Anthropology Under Fire: Ethics, Researchers and Children in War
Jo Boyden

Postscript

Chapter 13. 'Where Wings Take Dream': on Children in the Work of War and the War of Work
Pamela Reynolds

Notes on Contributors
Index