Pells, K;
Breed, A;
Uwihoreye, C;
Ndushabandi, E;
Elliott, M;
Nzahabwanayo, S;
(2021)
'No-One Can Tell a Story Better than the One Who Lived It': Reworking Constructions of Childhood and Trauma Through the Arts in Rwanda.
Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry
10.1007/s11013-021-09760-3.
(In press).
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Abstract
The intergenerational legacies of conflict and violence for children and young people are typically approached within research and interventions through the lens of trauma. Understandings of childhood and trauma are based on bio-psychological frameworks emanating from the Global North, often at odds with the historical, political, economic, social and cultural contexts in which interventions are enacted, and neglect the diversity of knowledge, experiences and practices. Within this paper we explore these concerns in the context of Rwanda and the aftermath of the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi. We reflect on two qualitative case studies: Connective Memories and Mobile Arts for Peace which both used arts-based approaches drawing on the richness of Rwandan cultural forms, such as proverbs and storytelling practices, to explore knowledge and processes of meaning-making about trauma, memory, and everyday forms of conflict from the perspectives of children and young people. We draw on these findings to argue that there is a need to refine and elaborate understandings of intergenerational transmission of trauma in Rwanda informed by: the historical and cultural context; intersections of structural and ‘everyday’ forms of conflict and social trauma embedded in intergenerational relations; and a reworking of notions of trauma ‘transmission’ to encompass the multiple connectivities between generations, temporalities and expressions of trauma.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | 'No-One Can Tell a Story Better than the One Who Lived It': Reworking Constructions of Childhood and Trauma Through the Arts in Rwanda |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s11013-021-09760-3 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1007/s11013-021-09760-389 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
| Keywords: | Science & Technology, Social Sciences, Life Sciences & Biomedicine, Anthropology, Psychiatry, Social Sciences, Biomedical, Biomedical Social Sciences, Children and youth, Trauma, Memory, Arts-based methods, Rwanda, GENOCIDE, CHILDREN, STRESS |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Social Research Institute |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10141078 |
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