Conceptualizing resilience: dissociation, avoidance, and silence as resilient trajectories among former child soldiers and ex-combatants coping with past trauma and present challenges in acholiland, Northern Uganda.

摘要

Studies of resilience in war-torn countries such as Uganda, Congo and Mozambique have broadened the field of resilience research [1, 2, 3, 4]. However "significant gaps in our knowledge about effective responses and factors associated with resilient outcomes and resilient trajectories" in these contexts prevail [5].In 2013 ethnographic fieldwork was carried out among former child soldiers and ex-combatants from the rebel army The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in Northern Uganda, Acholiland to explore coping strategies, demobilization and resilience in a context of severe adversity. The LRA is known for methods of brutal torture and use of child soldiers in their war against the Ugandan government using similar means. This paper rests on in-depth descriptions and emic notions of individual ex-combatant's responses to such adversity. The responses associated with resilient trajectories and outcomes call for re-conceptualizations of resilience: In Acholiland 'dissociation', 'avoidance', and 'silence' and in some cases 'appetitive aggression' [6] seem key in resilient responses and coping. Thus resilience must be studied in a variety of contexts, based on what we know from resilience research [7, 8] but integrated with a culturally sensitive and individual differences perspective approach [9]. Not doing so puts the subjects we study at risk of being placed in confining categories of pathology, which in return puts scholars at risk of missing the opportunity to broaden and deepen our understanding of resilience.