This study introduces a theoretical and empirical exploration of the issue of
participation within the field of adolescent sexual health promotion. It
contributes to, and engages in, two kinds of debates: policy and practice
discussions on how to involve adolescents in promoting their sexual health,
and academic debates on the relevant theory that informs policy and practice.
The thesis critically reviews literature on participatory adolescent sexual
health promotion arguing that the field is located at the intersection of three
central conceptual vectors: adolescence, which is constructed as inevitably
transiting towards adulthood from the moment childhood ends; adolescent
sexual health, which is primarily dictated by the languages of biomedicine
and psychology; and adolescent participation, which appears understood as a
process of adult transmission of knowledge onto the participating adolescent.
Challenging these coordinates, and by drawing on the works of Jürgen
Habermas and Paulo Freire, a framework for understanding participatory
processes is elaborated. Participation here is conceptualised as a social
process of creation via which those taking part in it concurrently shape and
maintain knowledge, mould and stabilise social relations, and care for
themselves.
A participatory adolescent sexual health promotion initiative implemented in
rural and urban-marginal communities of the Andean, Coastal and Jungle
regions of Peru, acts as the observational field for the empirical investigation
of the conceptualisation of participation advanced in the thesis.
Documentaries and dramas produced in video format by the adolescents
taking part in the initiative, together with audio-visual recordings of group
discussions in which the adolescents presented and problematised these
videos constitute the qualitative data gathered in this study. The data was
analysed to explore adolescents’ collective elaborations of sexuality in general
and of sexual health in particular, and to reconstruct, from these instances of
collective creation, the workings of the participation processes that underpin
them