This volume moves beyond definitions of the phenomena of conspiracy theorizing, extremism, fanaticism, fundamentalism, and terrorism and shifts into how we can explain these extreme beliefs and behaviors. It discusses what we should expect from a good explanation and how explanations can be integrated on different levels.
Written by global, multidisciplinary experts, Explaining Extreme Belief and Behavior moves beyond definitions of the phenomena of conspiracy theorizing, extremism, fanaticism, fundamentalism, and terrorism and shifts into how we can explain these extreme beliefs and behaviors. The first part of the book examines various fundamental theoretical and contextual issues such as the relationship between understanding and explaining extremism, challenges in explaining extreme beliefs, and pitfalls of current approaches. The second part delves into related methodological issues, including the desiderata for viable explanations--qualitative and quantitative data, macro-, meso-, and microlevels of analysis, first- and third-person accounts, attitudes and behaviors, or beliefs and actions. The third part explores related empirical issues and challenges--how we conceive and integrate insights into such related phenomena as the turn to extremism in particular contexts, the rise of extremist movements, and radicalization. This volume builds upon the first two in the Extreme Belief and Behavior Series by studying the very project of explaining extreme belief and behavior.
Rik Peels and Lorne L. Dawson: Introduction: The Project of Explaining
Extreme Belief and Behavior
Part I. Theoretical and Contextual Issues and Challenges
1: Rik Peels: Explaining and Understanding Extremism: The Relation Btween Two
Aims in Radicalization Studies
2: Martha Crenshaw: Explaining Terrorism and Violent Extremism
3: Naomi Kloosterboer and Jaron Harambam: The Extreme Actor's Perspective,
and Why It Matters for Explanation
4: Karsten R. Stueber: Empathy, Imaginative Resistance, and Fragmentary
Understanding: Trying to Make Sense of Extremism
5: Lorne L. Dawson: Assessing the Constructivist Critique of the Evidential
Value of Terrorists' Accounts of Their Actions
Part II. Methodological and Ethical Issues and Challenges
6: Lorne L. Dawson: The Matrix of Methodological Problems in the Study of
Extreme Beliefs and Behaviors: From the Vantage Point of the Study of Violent
Extremism
7: Lianne Vostermans: Integrating Macro-, Meso-, and Microlevel Explanations
of Violent Mobilization
8: Martijn de Koning: Accessing the Field, Defining People, and Exploring
Extended Complicity: Reflections on a Framework for Ethnographic Research
with Militant Activists
9: John F. Morrison: Ethical Challenges and Multidisciplinary Norms in
Terrorism Studies
10: Laura Feldt: Narrativity and Emotionality in Explaining Extreme Beliefs
and Behaviors
Part III. Empirical Issues and Challenges
11: Emily Corner: Explaining the Links Between Poor Mental Health and Violent
Extremism: From the Determination of Presence to the Delineation of
Relevance
12: Elizabeth Pearson: Radicalization as Gendered: Why We Cannot Explain
Extremism Without Taking Gender Seriously
13: Marc-André Argentino: Explaining QAnon as Lived Religion
14: Bethan Johnson: In No One We Trust: How Conspiratorial Thinking Turned
White Supremacist Groups Anti-American
15: Ayhan Kaya: Nativist and Islamist Radicalism in Europe: Co-Radicalization
of Young European Citizens
16: Ian McGregor: Psychological Motivation for Reactive Extremism, and How to
Quell It
Rik Peels holds a university research chair in analytic and interdisciplinary philosophy of religion in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands. He is also a senior research associate at the African Centre for Epistemology and Philosophy of Science at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa. His research interests are the ethics of belief, ignorance, scientism, replication in the humanities, and the philosophy and theology of fundamentalism and extremism. He leads the Extreme Beliefs research group (www.extremebeliefs.com ) and is one of the principal investigators of the Adapt Academy, which studies how societies can better adapt to crises.
Lorne L. Dawson is a distinguished professor emeritus in the Department of Religious Studies and the Department of Sociology and Legal Studies at the University of Waterloo (Canada). He has published three books, five edited books, and ninety-seven academic articles and book chapters. He was the co-founder and codirector of the Canadian Network for Research on Terrorism, Security and Society (2012-2023), and his recent research has focused on such topics as foreign fighters, the role of religion in motivating religious terrorism, and aspects of the social ecology of radicalization.
