ABSTRACT
Living daily with the diversity of types of routinized, banalized violence, discussed in detail in previous chapters, meant that community members constantly confronted the problem as to how to survive or manage the phenomenon. Here, an important distinction needs to be made between strategies to cope with violence as against specific solutions to resolve the problem. While there is a common tendency to view coping strategies and proactive solutions as one and the same, despite obvious interrelationships between the two, they are markedly different. Thus this final chapter addresses each in turn. In giving voice to people’s individual and communal responses, while recognizing their agency, it shows that avoidance rather than confrontation was the more common strategy. Lack of trust in outside institutions, highlighted in Chapter 8, and the resource constraint situation they confronted were both influential in reaching this conclusion. This discussion of coping strategies and solutions also pulls together many of the ideas and experiences of violence in both countries, as discussed in earlier chapters.
