This research note provides an overview of Radicalisation Studies as an emerging interdisciplinary field aimed at developing more holistic understandings of how and why individuals and groups turn to ...extreme ideologies and political violence. It traces the evolution of radicalisation research across core social science disciplines, including sociology, psychology, anthropology, and political science. While this burgeoning scholarship has expanded knowledge, persistent gaps remain due to studying radicalisation in disciplinary silos. To address this fragmentation, the research note proposes an integrated Radicalisation Studies approach grounded in critical social theory and reflexivity. This paradigm synthesises concepts and mechanisms from across disciplines to investigate the complex interplay between individual vulnerabilities, group dynamics, and broader socio‐political contexts in generating radicalisation. The note outlines theoretical foundations, guiding research questions, and methodological strategies for this new field focused on mixed‐methods, multi‐level analysis. Radicalisation Studies holds promise for advancing theoretical integration, contextualised explanations, critical perspectives on radicalisation discourse, and evidence‐based preventative policies. While challenges remain in institutionalising this emerging field, Radicalisation Studies has the potential to steer research towards greater interdisciplinarity and the nuanced understandings necessary to elucidate this complex phenomenon. The research note aims to spur debate on constructing Radicalisation Studies as a viable scholarly enterprise.
This article attempts to situate the UK ‘Prevent’ policy debate in the wider framework of the global Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) paradigm that emerged in late 2015. It is argued that the ...omission of a nuanced approach to the social, cultural, economic and political characteristics of the radicalised, there is a tendency to introduce blanket measures that inadvertently and indirectly lead to harm. Moreover, though ‘Prevent’ has been the outward-facing element of the UK government’s counter-extremism strategy since 2006, it conflates legitimate political resistance among young British Muslims as indications of violent extremism, providing credence to the argument that ‘Prevent’ is a form of social engineering ultimately mollifying resistance by re-affirming the status quo on domestic and foreign policy. In these circumstances, ‘Prevent’ can unintentionally add to structural and cultural Islamophobia, which are amplifiers of both Islamist and far right radicalisation. ‘Safeguarding’ vulnerable young people is imperative in this social policy domain but the language of inclusion in this is absent.
In recent years, there has been an unprecedented increase in interest in the study of radicalisation. To comprehend this phenomenon, numerous political science and sociological perspectives are ...emphasised to determine social movement conceptualisations. Using British Muslim youth as a case study, the goal of this article is to explore the themes of identity, resistance, racialisation, and mobilisation as antecedents to Islamist radicalisation. In other words, the few young Muslims who have turned to radicalism have done so due to fractures in their gendered sense of status and belonging at the local, national, and international levels. In this article, I conduct a theoretical and conceptual review of five distinct stages of Islamist radicalisation in the context of the United Kingdom, all of which are influenced by local, national, and international concerns. This discussion supports the argument that these waves of radicalism result from identity fragmentation in local communities and worsen as a result of international events. In the British context, the dangers of radicalism are determined by the intersections of local, global, and international events, or at the micro, meso, and macro levels, and these indicate the greatest risks linked to this phenomenon.
New perspectives on ethnic relations, Islam and neoliberalism have emerged in Turkey since the rise of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2002. Placing the period within its historical and ...contemporary context, Tahir Abbas argues that what it is to be ethnically, religiously and culturally Turkish has been transformed.
This article provides a Foucauldian perspective on the racialised biopolitics of Islamophobia in the global north. It is argued that a pervasive, wide-ranging racialised logos is being used to ...undermine the citizenship potential of Muslim groups now forming an active presence in urban concentrations across wide political and cultural spaces. The negative characterisations of Muslim minority groups in the global north focus on various parameters of othering, with the experiences of Muslim minorities in the United Kingdom acting as a test case. A dominant hegemonic discourse perpetuates the view that British Muslims are undesirable because (a) they embody the most extreme ‘other’, (b) they are a risk to national security due to dangers associated with inherent radicalisation and (c) Muslim voices of resistance are untrustworthy. These forms of Islamophobia provide perspectives on anti-immigration, xenophobia and depopulation that racialises the Muslim minority category in the sphere of neoliberal globalised capital accumulation. It has significant local area implications for Muslim minority and wider identitarian politics, ultimately perpetuating a cyclical process through which political biases within dominant politics reproduce the racialised discourses of Islamophobia.
The first and most important thing that I would say is that I am extremely grateful to the conference organisers, and in particular Dr Rik Peels, for providing me with an opportunity to read the book ...and to provide some input on some of its topics. I was at once intrigued by the many ways in which different sorts of extremism are characterised in this book, and this continued throughout the book. Examples include the contrast between tactics extremism, ideological extremism, and psychological extremism as a valuable framework for working through ideas that are about the application, techniques, and mindsets concerning those that might interest us as extremists, among other things.
In essence, the “war on terror” has normalised the securitisation of Muslims and regularised the existence of Islamophobia. This has increased the likelihood of radicalisation, not reduced it. In ...terms of foreign policy, Afghanistan remains mired in complex multifaceted conflicts that have much to do with the presence of external actors, even though, twenty years on, the US and its allies have by and large left the country. The invasion of Iraq was motivated by a geo-strategic interest in the Middle East, with non-existent “weapons of mass destruction” used as a justification. Iraq descended into chaos once it was invaded in 2003, with the contagion affecting Syria. It was the necessary precursor to the emergence of the so-called Islamic State just over a decade later. Libya has also been affected by western interests, destabilising the country, bringing more extremism and chaos into play, not less. For many, the “war on terror” has been a unmitigated disaster, but one that was predictable at the outset because the war on Afghanistan was motivated by revenge and a gung-ho mentality supported by unrestrained weaponry.
Muhammad Anwar passed away on 11 June 2019, at the age of 75 after 50 years of research and policy development in the area of race and ethnic studies. In this article, I explore his numerous ...contributions, including his important work, The Myth of Return: Pakistanis in Britain, published in 1979. His interest in politics and, in particular, participation, and representation within it, led to Race and Elections, published in 1994. His subsequent works on identifying the intergenerational differences among British Pakistanis, who also happen to represent a significant proportion of British Muslims, developed into his final major book, Between Cultures, published in 1998. I explore the nature of his contribution, the impact that it had in the field of race and ethnic studies, and the research openings generated for other scholars to expand on his social anthropological and sociological emphasis on better understanding the experiences of racial and ethnic minorities and the need to better develop policies to alleviate ethnic and racial disadvantage.
I reflect on the intellectualism of Ziauddin Sardar in three fields. First, in his science of Islam, Zia reasons the need for critical enquiry from within. Global Islam is open, fluid, and dynamic, ...but it is missing in much of the world of Islam today. Second, how we view the Other is how we wish to project the Self-and vice-versa. Until the Self neutralizes itself, the Other is unknowable. Individualism is at the axis of Othering. Finally, where change is the only constant, the mind must be prepared to think beyond axioms and norms reliant on the past.
ABSTRACT
New product development (NPD) speed is becoming an important weapon by which firms can gain market share in today's competitive and complex market environments, where consumer preferences ...change rapidly. Drawing on the information technology (IT)‐enabled organizational capabilities perspective, this study proposes that IT ambidexterity—the simultaneous pursuit of IT exploitation and IT exploration, which has become imperative in modern industry to sustain the business value of IT—enhances NPD speed by facilitating operational agility. We examine the proposed relationship of IT ambidexterity with the potential moderating role of market complexity in a sample composed of 292 British high‐tech firms. Our findings, based on a moderated‐mediation analysis, suggest that the impact of IT ambidexterity on NPD speed is mediated by operational agility and that the mediation effect is especially pronounced in complex markets. The resulting theoretical arguments and empirical evidence yield further insights into the strategic impacts of IT.
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