Pathways Away from Radicalism

Session Submission Type: Invited Session (90 minute)

Description

Continually growing instances of radicalization – commonly known as the systematic, frequent adoption of more unruly, violent, and terrorist forms of contention by a group that is part of an opposition movement – justifies the enhanced attention social movement scholars have given to the topic. These studies represent a correction to decades of over-attention to nonviolent, progressive, and typically “western” movements that dominates the scholarship. As a result, we have benefited from an impressive documentation of a fairly predictable progression wherein violent factions form in the context of unfavorable political conditions, heightened repression, deepening intra-movement tension and rift, etc. The formation of the Weathermen in the United States, the Red Brigades in Italy, the Palestinian-based Fatah-Tanzim and the Jewish-based Hilltop Youth in Israel-Palestine, EOKA in British-ruled Cyprus, or the Provisional IRA in Northern Ireland are only a few cases in point. Playing a central role in these advances and fully vested in it, we are nevertheless aware of the relative lack of attention to the inverse cases of processes of de-radicalization, contained radicalization or institutionalization on the part of social movements across political, ethnonational, religious, geographic, and other divides. De-radicalization and contained radicalization are not simply the absence of radicalization of its reversals, but processes in their own right.

The proposed session brings together prominent social movement scholars who have studied movements that have “moved” in both directions: radicalization and de-radicalization or contained radicalization worldwide, in a theoretically and empirically informed manner, to share their wisdom with respect to the following aspects:
· Explanatory power of a given theory/perspective or a combination thereof
· Practical takeaways from studying cases of contained and de-radicalization to thinking about radicalization
· Resemblances across settings without ignoring case-specific features
· Most suitable unit and level of analysis
· Most fruitful and fitting analytical strategy

Sub Unit

• Collective Behavior and Social Movements Section / Pathways Away from Radicalism

Presider

• Eitan Y. Alimi, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Individual Presentations

• A Processual Analysis of Deradicalization from Extremist White Supremacism - Kathleen Blee, University of Pittsburgh

• Embracing and Eschewing Terrorism: Palestine and South Africa in Comparative Perspective - Jeff Goodwin, New York University

• How Global Jihad Ends: Syria and the International Politics that Disrupted Transnational Militancy - Jerome Drevon, Geneva Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies

• Actor-Driven Strategic De-Radicalization in Colombia - Louis Edgar Esparza, California State University, Los Angeles

Discussants

• Eitan Y. Alimi, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

• Gilda Zwerman, SUNY College at Old Westbury

Session Organizers

• Eitan Y. Alimi, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

• Gilda Zwerman, SUNY College at Old Westbury