Articles of the month: June 2020

Articles of the month Hits: 314
The most interesting and important papers on the crisis anthropology and the adjacent areas in June 2020

Abstract

Through the lens of Benedict Anderson's Imagined Community concept, this paper examines how the selected community‐building theories are useful in understanding the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and its imagined community. Using four factors—language , education , power and history —derived from Anderson's Imagined Community concept, this paper applies theories of Modernism, Primordialism and Insurgency Governance to explain ISIL's imagined community. Specifically, our argument is threefold: (a) Anderson's Imagined Community concept and alternate theories of community building, although insightful, does an imperfect job at describing ISIL's Caliphate; (b) ISIL's group structure appears to transcend traditional and accepted notions of nations, nationalism and nation states; and (c) based on this reasoning, ISIL's Caliphate can be considered an outlier in community‐building literature analysed.

Abstract

Previous research on the causes of domestic terrorism has tended to focus on domestic determinants. Although this approach can be helpful to understand many causes of terrorism, it implicitly disregards how the tactical choices made by similar nonstate actors elsewhere influence a group’s decision to resort to terrorist tactics. This study argues that the adoption of terrorism among ethnic and ethnoreligious groups results from a process of conditional emulation. Groups are more likely to emulate the terrorist choice of others with whom they are connected by shared political grievances and spatial networks. The theory is tested on a new and original group-level data set of ethnic and ethnoreligious terrorism (1970 to 2009) using geospatial analysis and spatial econometric models. The results provide strong support for the hypothesized mechanism leading to the diffusion of terrorism and suggest that emulation—more than domestic and contextual factors—substantially influences dissidents’ tactic choice.

 

Intro

Jihadists have their nasheeds, and the Islamic State (IS) became popular for its nasheed compositions used in propaganda videos. Nasheed is an a cappella song praising the Prophet Muhammad and reciting Quranic verses glorifying jihad. Similarly, drug cartels have bands that compose and sing narco corridos, or “drug ballads,” based on Mexican folk music, which glorify cartel leaders as modern-day “Robin Hood” figures and announce executions of enemies. Both nasheeds and narco corridos have much in common: glorifying historical victories over enemies in wars and revolutions; using lyrics to warn their enemies about their invincibility and strength and bravery; calling out specific enemies as targets; and using their respective ideologies to justify their acts, behaviors, and beliefs.

This study examines and comparatively analyzes the two musical genres in the context of terrorism and narco-terrorism, and how these musical traditions affect their respective followers, admirers, and devotees. The analysis also highlights how these musical genres popularize crime and violence, and desensitize audiences to the extreme brutality praised and glorified in their songs.

 

Abstract

This report seeks to document women’s forms of participation in both community-based armed groups (CBAGs) and peacebuilding in areas affected by CBAG violence in sub-Saharan Africa, with a focus on East Africa. This report finds that women participate in violence and clandestine operations, provide logistical support to CBAGs, and legitimize the groups’ activities to the civilian population. Though many narratives of women and conflict emphasize conscription and coercion as pathways for women’s entry into armed groups, women also lend support to CBAGs to advance their economic, social, or personal interests.

Women’s contributions to CBAGs are often underestimated in part due to their influence in informal or customary venues or through personal relationships; in many contexts, women express opinions through songs or customary rituals. This report also underlines that women are not a homogenous group and not all women are equally placed to participate in CBAG activities. This underlines the need to ask not only “where are the women?” but also “which women are where?” when discussing gender and conflict to understand how different types of women contribute differently to community-based armed groups.

Abstract

Terrorism has typically been considered an organized activity undertaken by networks of individuals who share a collective identity and purpose. In recent years, media, law enforcement and scholarly attention has increasingly focused on the construct of the lone actor terrorist. However, lone actor terrorism has suffered from significant conceptual confusion, particularly with regard to whether such actors actually radicalize and/or undertake acts of violence alone. In order to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of this emerging phenomenon, this paper analyzes five lone actor attacks perpetrated in Australia between September 2014 and the end of 2017. It examines what (if any) interpersonal relationships these lone actors had with others, along with the nature of such connections and any ideological or logistical support these individuals may have provided. A personal network design is used to visualize interpersonal relationships and explore the nature of such connections. The paper concludes by discussing implications for policy and practice, and for the construct of the lone actor.

Keywords:

  • Illicit networks
  • Lone actor
  • Social network analysis
  • Social networks
  • Terrorism

Abstract

TikTok is the fastest-growing application today, attracting a huge audience of 1.5 billion active users, mostly children and teenagers. Recently, the growing presence of extremist’s groups on social media platforms became more prominent and massive. Yet, while most of the scholarly attention focused on leading platforms like Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, the extremist immigration to other platforms like TikTok went unnoticed. This study is a first attempt to find the Far-right’s use of TikTok: it is a descriptive analysis based on a systematic content analysis of TikTok videos, posted in early 2020. Our findings reveal the disturbing presence of Far-right extremism in videos, commentary, symbols and pictures included in TikTok’s postings. While similar concerns were with regard to other social platforms, TikTok has unique features to make it more troublesome. First, unlike all other social media TikTok’ s users are almost all young children, who are more naïve and gullible when it comes to malicious contents. Second, TikTok is the youngest platform thus severely lagging behind its rivals, who have had more time to grapple with how to protect their users from disturbing and harmful contents. Yet, TikTok should have learned from these other platforms’ experiences and apply TikTok’s own Terms of Service that does not allow postings that are deliberately designed to provoke or antagonize people, or are intended to harass, harm, hurt, scare, distress, embarrass or upset people or include threats of physical violence.

Abstract

Research exploring radicalization pathways and how and why people become involved in terrorism has expanded since the 9/11 attacks. Likewise, over the last decade research exploring de-radicalization and desistence from terrorism has grown and expanded in an attempt to promote exit from extremist or terror groups. However, research studies on how individuals sustain engagement in terrorism and their involvement with extremist organizations, often in the face of great adversity, are absent from the body of research. To address this scarcity of research this study analyzed accounts of engagement in violent extremism produced by Northern Irish loyalist and republican paramilitaries in order to explore how their paramilitary lifestyle, perpetration of acts of political violence and the pressure from countering threats posed by rival groups, and the State security forces impacted on them. The analysis utilized a hybrid of thematic analysis and interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). The themes raised through the analysis reflected the psychological, social and economic hardship associated with this lifestyle. The narrative accounts also illustrated psychological changes associated to engagement in violence and from insulation within tightly knit extremist groups. As most of the participants faced incarceration during their paramilitary careers, themes also reflected on the impact imprisonment had on them. The themes explored factors that sustained their involvement, including the role of identity development and identity fusion in sustaining their extremism, the impact of insulated group membership, feelings of efficacy, dehumanization processes, community support, and beliefs in the utility of violence.

Keywords:

Northern Ireland, violent extremism, terrorism, radicalization, political violence

Abstract

What explains the specific location of Islamic State attacks in Syria and Iraq? We consider how both ethnic and economic factors shape the group’s decision-making about where to attack. We explore these competing motivations using spatial analysis of the Islamic State’s individual acts of violence from 2013–2017. We find that both areas with ethnic heterogeneity and valuable economic rents are associated with more individual Islamic State violent events. By examing the micro-foundations of the Islamic State’s conflict decisions, we provide further nuance to understanding the strategic logic of rebel groups during wartime.