The Contribution of Social Movement Theory to Understanding Terrorism (original) (raw)
2014
Dynamics of Political Violence examines how violence emerges and develops from episodes of contentious politics. By considering a wide range of empirical cases, such as anarchist movements, ethno-nationalist and left-wing militancy in Europe, contemporary Islamist violence, and insurgencies in South Africa and Latin America, this pathbreaking volume of research identifies the forces that shape radicalization and violent escalation. It also contributes to the process-and-mechanism-based models of contentious politics that have been developing over the past decade in both sociology and political science. Chapters of original research emphasize how the processes of radicalization and violence are open-ended, interactive, and context dependent. They offer detailed empirical accounts as well as comprehensive and systematic analyses of the dynamics leading to violent episodes. Specifically, the chapters converge around four dynamic processes that are shown to be especially germane to radicalization and violence: dynamics of movement-state interaction; dynamics of intra-movement competition; dynamics of meaning formation and transformation; and dynamics of diffusion. Contents: A contentious politics approach to the explanation of radicalization, Lorenzo Bosi, Chares Demetriou and Stefan Malthaner. Part I Dynamics of Interaction between Oppositional Movements/Groups and the State: The mechanisms of emotion in violent protest, Hank Johnston; A typology of backfire mechanisms, Lasse Lindekilde; Processes of radicalization and de-radicalization in Western European prisons (1965-1986), Christian G. De Vito. Part II Competition and Conflict: Dynamics of Intra-Movement Interaction: Competitive escalation during protest cycles: comparing left-wing and religious conflicts, Donatella della Porta; Intra-movement competition and political outbidding as mechanisms of radicalization in Northern Ireland, 1968-1969, Gianluca De Fazio; The limits of radicalization: escalation and restraint in the South African liberation movement, Devashree Gupta. Part III Dynamics of Meaning Formation: Frames and Beyond: Contentious interactions, dynamics of interpretations, and radicalization: the Islamization of Palestinian nationalism, Eitan Y. Alimi and Hank Johnston; Radical or righteous? Using gender to shape public perceptions of political violence, Jocelyn Viterna; From national event to transnational injustice symbol: the three phases of the Muhammad cartoon controversy, Thomas Olesen. Part IV Dynamics of (Transnational) Diffusion: Radicalization from outside: the role of the anarchist diaspora in coordinating armed actions in Franco’s Spain, Eduardo Romanos; Protest diffusion and rising political violence in the Turkish ’68 movement: the Arab-Israeli war, ‘Paris May’ and the hot summer of 1968, Emin Alper; The evolution of the al-Qaeda-type terrorism: networks and beyond, Ekaterina Stepanova; Conclusion, Martha Crenshaw; Index.