“Violence is who we are”: Adolescents constructing human rights consciousness in “postwar” Guatemala

National education reforms in Guatemala’s postwar years have centered on supporting civic skills and human rights awareness, while largely silencing historical analysis of the recent armed conflict. But given the scale of Guatemala’s “postwar” violence and instability, it is unclear whether young people find relevance in the principles of human rights, as well as how they interpret their disarticulation from Guatemala’s history of violence. Everyday experiences with a deeply unequal society may further undermine this educational approach and the peacebuilding goals that underlie it. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in rural and urban communities, this paper explores how “postwar” generation youth construct human rights consciousness, drawing on the language and principles of human rights to generate their own narratives about past and present violence. Young peoples’ interpretations of human rights pivot along interpretations of past and present injustice, exhibiting three contrasting stances: narratives of denial in which adolescents reject the normative claims of the human rights framework, narratives of skepticism in which they question whether human rights can be effectively practiced in Guatemala, and narratives of empowerment in which they embrace justice initiatives for past and present violence through the lens of human rights. While outlining a typology of human rights consciousness among Guatemalan adolescents, I explore how young people draw on the multiple histories and silences that they have been presented with through formal and informal educational encounters.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/108492/1/Bellino_Listening to press.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/108492/4/Bellino_Educating for HR consciousness.pdfDescription of Bellino_Listening to press.pdf : Main articl

Whose past, whose present?: Historical Memory Among the “Postwar” Generation in Guatemala

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/109393/1/Whose past whose present TO PRESS.pdfDescription of Bellino, M.J. (2014). Whose Past, Whose Present. Chp. 7, pp. 131-151.pdf : Main articleDescription of Whose past whose present TO PRESS.pdf : [Superseded] Manuscript versio

Is Development “The New Peace”? Global Citizenship as National Obligation in Postwar Guatemala

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146651/1/aeq12266_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146651/2/aeq12266.pd

Civic engagement in extreme times: The remaking of justice among Guatemala’s “postwar” generation

In recent years there has been a dramatic growth in the field of youth civic engagement, though little of this work has been conducted in fragile democracies contending with legacies of war and authoritarianism. This study explores how Guatemalan postwar generation youth develop as civic actors under extreme conditions of violence, social and political distrust, and a dwindling space for public expression. Drawing from ethnographic research conducted in rural and urban Guatemala, this study demonstrates how young people’s sense of civic efficacy interacts with their interpretations of historical injustice and the civic messages mediated by teachers, families, peers, and communities. Young people struggle to define and enact appropriate civic action, at times working outside unjust systems as a means of fostering change.The research presented in this article has been generously supported by the United States Institute of Peace and Harvard University’s David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. I am deeply grateful for the mentorship I have received from Drs. Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, Meira Levinson, and Karen Murphy, and the added guidance from Sarah Dryden-Peterson and the Mowana Lab, who encouraged me to pursue this paper. An earlier draft of this article was selected by the Comparative and International Education Society’s Civic and Democratic Education Special Interest Group for the 2014 Judith Torney-Purta Outstanding Paper Award.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/108385/1/Civics in extremis_Bellino_DeepBlue.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/108385/4/Bellino_Civic engagement in extreme times_ECSJ.pdfDescription of Civics in extremis_Bellino_DeepBlue.pdf : Bellino_Civic engagement in extreme times: The remaking of justice among Guatemala’s “postwar” generationDescription of Bellino_Civic engagement in extreme times_ECSJ.pdf : "Online first" edition of published tex

Education as Solidarity

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/138201/1/aeq12210_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/138201/2/aeq12210.pd

Corrigendum to ‘Vermiculations from karst caves: The case of Pertosa-Auletta system (Italy)’. (Catena (2019) 182 (104178) (S0341816219303200), (10.1016/j.catena.2019.104178))

The authors regret the presence of incomplete information in the author affiliations (reported correctly above) and in the acknowledgments of the original article (provided in the amended version below). The authors are obliged to Mr. Vincenzo Manisera, speleologist of the MIdA Foundation, for sharing his experiences and for his invaluable help in all the field activities, to Dr. Sacha A. Berardo (University of Salerno, Italy) for the language editing, and to the two anonymous reviewers, who provided helpful comments and suggestions. Funding was provided by the Spanish project MINECO CGL2016-75590-P with ERDF funds, by the MIdA Foundation, which generously supported the whole project, and by the University of Salerno, which provided facilities for carrying out the research. The authors would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused

Finding a Way Forward: Conceptualizing Sustainability in Afghanistan's Community-Based Schools

Community-based educational (CBE) models have gained recognition across diverse contexts for closing access gaps, leveraging local assets, and shaping cost-effective and culturally relevant educational opportunities in marginalized communities. In protracted conflict contexts such as Afghanistan, CBE compensates for weak state capacity by cultivating community engagement and support. This article considers the impact of CBE in the voices of Afghanistan’s educational and community stakeholders, gained through interviews and observations with parents, teachers, students, educational officers, and school shuras (councils) across eight communities in two provinces. Against a backdrop of continued insecurity, resource shortages, and uncertain projections for future government and NGO support, conceptions of sustainability emerge as salient but poorly defined, and as lacking common understanding among stakeholders about the purposes and long-term prospects of CBE. We argue that the success of CBE models depends on how various actors define sustainability and what it is the model is seeking to sustain. The study underscores three dimensions of sustainability: (1) self-reported changed attitudes toward education, (2) decisions about student transitions from community to government schools, and (3) emergent indicators of community ownership over CBE. Across these measures of sustainable attitudes, actions, and community arrangements, quality education is positioned as a mechanism for long-term community commitment. However, increased community interest and capacity to sustain CBE is at odds with the current policy approach, which anticipates the eventual handover of all community-based schools to the government

Substantial impact of mobility restrictions on reducing COVID-19 incidence in Italy in 2020

Italy was the first country after China to be severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, in early 2020. The country responded swiftly to the outbreak with a nationwide two-step lockdown, the first one light, and the second one tight. By analysing 2020 national mobile phone movements, we assessed how lockdown compliance influenced its efficacy

Efficient generation of highly crystalline carbon quantum dots via electrooxidation of ethanol for rapid photodegradation of organic dyes

Achieving versatile routes to generate crystalline carbon-based nanostructures has become a fervent pursuit in photocatalysis-related fields. We demonstrate that the direct electrooxidation of ethanol, performed on Ni foam, yields ultra-small and highly crystalline graphene-like structures named carbon quantum dots (CQDs). We perform simulations of various sp2 and sp3 domains in order to understand the optical properties of CQDs by accounting their contribution as absorbance/luminescent centers in the overall optical response. Experiments and simulations reveal that absorbance bands for as-synthesized CQDs are dominated by small sp2 domains comprised of r7 aromatic-rings. After 48 h synthesis, the dispersion transition from yellow to red, exhibiting new and red shifted absorbance bands. Furthermore, fluorescence emission is governed by medium-sized sp 2 domains (with aromatic ring counts r12) and oxygen-containing groups. These oxygen-rich groups within the CQDs, confirmed by FT-IR and XPS, are responsible for the fast photodegradation of organic dyes, with B90% of methylene blue (MB) being degraded within the first 5 min of light exposure. Our work provides crucial insights about the electrochemical synthesis and overall optical properties of carbon nanostructures, while being effective and reliable toward the degradation of contaminants in water

Do master narratives change among High School Students?: a characterization of how national history is represented

Master narratives frame students’ historical knowledge, possibly hindering access to more historical representations. A detailed analysis of students’ historical narratives about the origins of their own nation is presented in terms of four master narrative characteristics related to the historical subject, national identification, the main theme and the nation concept. The narratives of Argentine 8th and 11th graders were analyzed to establish whether a change toward a more complex historical account occurred. The results show that the past is mostly understood in master narrative terms but in the 11th grade narratives demonstrate a more historical understanding. Only identification appears to be fairly constant across years of history learning. The results suggest that in history education first aiming at a constructivist concept of nation and then using the concept to reflect on the national historical subject and events in the narrative might help produce historical understanding of a national past.This article was written with the support of projects EDU-2010-17725 (DGICYT, Spain) and PICT-2008-1217 (ANPCYT, Argentina), coordinated by the first author. We are grateful for that support