Poor health outcomes amongst Afro-Colombians are driven by discrimination as well as economic disadvantage

Differential health outcomes are driven by both structural and internalised forms of discrimination, so strategies targeting health disparities amongst Afro-Colombians must adopt an integrated approach, writes Maria Cecilia Dedios (LSE Psychological and Behavioural Science)

Is violence ever right? Moral reasoning about violence among youngsters belonging to gangs and peacebuilding groups

Objective: We investigate cultural group-level understandings of violence and their connections to individual moral reasoning about violence among disadvantaged young people belonging to gangs (n = 33) and peacebuilding (n = 30) groups. Methods: Drawing from in-depth interviews in two low-income neighborhoods in Colombia, we use thematic analysis to explore and compare group-level understandings of violence-entailing definitions of violence, causal attributions of violence, and strategies to handle violence in everyday life-by type of youth group. Next, we use a chi-square analysis to assess between-group differences in the proportion of participants endorsing the morality of violence according to eight potential moral violence triggers. Results: Youths from both types of groups define violence in similar terms with one key difference. Only gang members ascribe agency to "the group" (i.e., the gang and the family) describing it as a social entity capable of harming and being harmed. This taken-for-granted cultural assumption frames the gang members' justifications of violence as moral to defend one's group. Concurrently, a higher proportion of youths from violent groups support the morality of violence to defend one's reputation (p = .001), honor (p <.001), and group (p = .001). Conclusions: Between-group differences in shared understandings of violence are consistent with differences in individual moral reasoning about violence across group type. The findings have implications for improving the efficacy of violence prevention interventions, which rarely account for the link between young people's shared understandings of violence and moral reasoning about its use

Forgiveness as a vehicle to improve wellbeing in post-conflict Colombia

Practising forgiveness contributes to developing personal skills and opens up horizons for the youth in a post-conflict scenario and the programme ES.PE.RE has had a positive impact on the mental health of their participants in a country where the offer of these services is scarce, write Sandra Jovchelovitch (LSE), María Cecilia Dedios (LSE) and Natalia Concha (LSE)

El perdón como vehículo para mejorar el bienestar en la Colombia del posconflicto

La práctica del perdón contribuye al desarrollo de habilidades personales y abre horizontes a los jóvenes en un escenario de posconflicto. El programa ES.PE.RE ha tenido un impacto positivo en la salud mental de sus participantes en un país donde la oferta de estos servicios es escasa, escriben Sandra Jovchelovitch (LSE), María Cecilia Dedios (LSE) and Natalia Concha (LSE)

Reflections on a research field trip to Brazil

As Professor Sandra Jovchelovitch prepares to travel to Quito to participate in Habitat III, current and former postgraduate students reflect on their experience of travelling to Brazil to observe first-hand how socio-cultural psychologists research and work in complex urban environments

Imagination and mobility in the city: porosity of borders and human development in divided urban environments

We focus on the notion of borders to explore how mobility and immobility in the city affect the relationship between human development and urban culture. We define borders as a relational space made of territoriality, representations, and different possibilities of mobility and immobility. Drawing on research in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, we suggest a systematic approach to the analysis of borders and identify the socio-institutional, spatial, and symbolic elements that make them more or less porous and thus more or less amenable to human mobility. We highlight the association between porosity in city borders and human development and illustrate the model contrasting two favela communities in Rio de Janeiro. We show that participation in the sociocultural environment by favela grassroots organisations increases the porosity of internal city borders and contributes to the development of self, communities, and the city. To focus on borders, their different elements and levels of porosity means to address simultaneously the psychosocial and cultural layers of urban spaces and the novel ways through which grassroots social actors develop themselves through participation and semiotic reconstruction of the socio-cultural environment