Beyond Youth ‘Inclusion’: Intergenerational Politics In Post-Conflict Bali

Abstract

Increased attention to the predicaments and potential of youth in conflict has moved the conflict resolution field in important new directions. However, our understandings of and approaches to youth in conflict have been limited by an emphasis on the inclusion of youth in peacebuilding projects without a correspondingly thorough analysis of the often-contested social categories of youth in conflicts. Drawing on in-depth ethnographic work with youth in post-conflict Bali, Indonesia, where attempts to promote a local project to memorialise victims of mass violence exposed deep-seated intergenerational tensions around the meaning and relevance of ‘youth’, this article offers both an analytic reframing of youth in conflict and suggestions for more effective and reflective conflict resolution practice.

Keywords:

• conflict
• youth
• Indonesia
• Bali
• peacebuilding
• ethnography

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The perceived threat of a ‘youth bulge’ refers to the belief that large numbers of young men represent a potential source of social unrest, particularly if this group makes up greater than twenty percent of a given population (see Hendrixson [2003] and [2004]; see also Goldstone [1993] and Huntington 1996 for examples of how this concept has been applied).

2 Much has been written about the history of the category pemuda in Indonesia that is outside the scope of this paper, including the roles and representations of pemuda in Indonesian nation-building (see Foulcher 2000; Parker & Nilan 2013), and the relationships of pemuda groups to criminality (see Ryter 1998; Aspinall & van Klinken, 2010; and Wilson 2015).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Leslie Dwyer

DR LESLIE DWYER is Associate Professor and Director of the Center for the Study of Gender and Conflict at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University. A cultural anthropologist by training, her work focuses on issues of violence, gender, post-conflict social life, transitional justice, and the politics of memory and identity.