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During recent fieldwork in Namibia I noticed that the people I worked with often took care to arrange our public encounters so that onlookers did not interpret our relationship in ways that might be inconvenient. I was cast as a friend,... more
During recent fieldwork in Namibia I noticed that the people I worked with often took care to arrange our public encounters so that onlookers did not interpret our relationship in ways that might be inconvenient. I was cast as a friend, colleague, employer, customer, acquaintance. My presence created opportunities for the extension of people's "repertoire of identities" (Cinnirella 1998) in both desirable and undesirable directions, and their choreography of our public encounters can be seen as part of their "impression management" (Davis 1986). Observing this process generated opportunities for me to gain insight into the way that people in the research sites negotiated social representations of identity and attributed values to particular social categories, such as volunteer, friend, namesake, NGO-worker, person living with HIV and so forth. However, finding myself playing allocated roles also raised ethical issues, two of which I discuss in this article: 1...
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1 For the purposes of this project, we us the term ‘extremist groups’ to refer to those groups in which a significant proportion of members have shown a willingness to deploy or support illegal strategies of action. We intentionally adopt... more
1 For the purposes of this project, we us the term ‘extremist groups’ to refer to those groups in which a significant proportion of members have shown a willingness to deploy or support illegal strategies of action. We intentionally adopt a broad definition as our aim is to develop a typology with broad applicability across a wide variety of groups. We are aware that this definition might be problematic in non-democratic or narrowly-democratic states where the thresholds of illegality might be very low. on violent escalation that could provide a basis for more systematic analysis of such brakes.
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This article examines the functioning and failure of restraint throughout the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) campaign, from its start in 1999 to its end in 2014. SHAC provides an intriguing case for those interested in restraint... more
This article examines the functioning and failure of restraint throughout the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) campaign, from its start in 1999 to its end in 2014. SHAC provides an intriguing case for those interested in restraint within militant or radical social movements. The campaign comprised a range of lawful and unlawful activities. These often extended well beyond standard repertoires of nonviolent civil disobedience surprising perhaps in a campaign that claimed to be rooted in a nonviolent tradition; but rarely resulted in interpersonal violence and never in the use of lethal force, even as the escalation of state-led repression and policing limited opportunities for peaceful protest. In this article we first identify three aspects of the campaign where a satisfactory explanation for the observable patterns of violence across the SHAC campaign appears to require an understanding of restraint: innovations away from more militant tactics at the outset and during the fina...
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This chapter reflects on the key conclusions from across the previous chapters. First, it discusses how the Prevent Duty has become normalised in schools, colleges and early years provision, as professionals incorporated it into existing... more
This chapter reflects on the key conclusions from across the previous chapters. First, it discusses how the Prevent Duty has become normalised in schools, colleges and early years provision, as professionals incorporated it into existing structures and processes—both in the curriculum and through safeguarding. Second, it discusses how, whilst some professionals might have unconsciously reproduced potentially harmful stereotypes and simplistic assumptions about terrorism and extremism, others have consciously worked to mitigate the possible negative effects of the Duty, and have used the curriculum to further develop values education and opportunities for critical discussion. Third, the chapter reflects on the implications of the apparent banalisation of Prevent within education, and how this may or may not intersect with processes of securitisation.
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In July 2015, a legal duty came into force requiring that ‘specified authorities’, including schools and further education colleges (‘colleges’), show ‘due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism’ – popularly... more
In July 2015, a legal duty came into force requiring that ‘specified authorities’, including schools and further education colleges (‘colleges’), show ‘due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism’ – popularly referred to as the ‘Prevent duty’. Since the Prevent duty was put before Parliament, it has been the focus of extensive and often highly polarised public debate. While the UK government has argued that the duty ‘doesn’t and shouldn’t stop schools from discussing controversial issues’, critics of the duty have maintained that it will have, and is having, a ‘chilling effect’ on free speech on schools and colleges. In addition, while the UK government has insisted that Prevent and the Prevent duty relate to all forms of extremism, critics argue that, whatever the intention of individual policymakers, practitioners and professionals, Prevent and the Prevent duty continue in practice to concentrate overwhelmingly on Muslim communities, thereby exacerbati...
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Joel Busher reflects on what his 16 months of ethnographic fieldwork with the English Defence League tells us about what distinguishes them from the ‘ordinary English people’ that they claim to represent. His research highlights the... more
Joel Busher reflects on what his 16 months of ethnographic fieldwork with the English Defence League tells us about what distinguishes them from the ‘ordinary English people’ that they claim to represent. His research highlights the importance of linking the attitudes and ideology of EDL activists with their lived experience, and questions what role society at large plays in shaping that experience.
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The emergence or resurgence of radical political groups invariably provokes a struggle between activists, academics, commentators, and policymakers over the set of terms that best correspond to the group in question. While such debates... more
The emergence or resurgence of radical political groups invariably provokes a struggle between activists, academics, commentators, and policymakers over the set of terms that best correspond to the group in question. While such debates are an integral part of political practice, scrutinizing the claims made in these debates reveals significant limitations in standard strategies of description—most notably their inability to satisfactorily render either the essential cultural messiness and dynamism of contentious politics or the intersections between the so-called extreme and mainstream. We propose an alternative, albeit not mutually exclusive, strategy of description. This entails mapping what we call the micro-moral worlds of contentious politics—the patchwork of intersubjective contexts of belief and behavior through which activism takes place. We illustrate this with two empirical cases: The English Defence League in Britain and Republican Sinn Fein in Ireland.
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When activists in radical, far or extreme right groups claim identities that set them apart from such analytical categories, they are usually given short shrift by commentators and academics, a function of the presumed strategic nature of... more
When activists in radical, far or extreme right groups claim identities that set them apart from such analytical categories, they are usually given short shrift by commentators and academics, a function of the presumed strategic nature of such claims and the evidential inaccuracies that scrutiny of such claims often reveals. Such responses help ensure critical readings of these groups. However, they also risk overlooking the fact that even where such identifications appear misleading, they may still be causally significant, shaping the groups’ evolution in important ways. I develop this argument using the case of the English Defence League, a group whose activists have tended to claim they are a ‘single-issue group’ protesting only about the supposed threats of ‘Islamification’. I demonstrate how their enactment of this identity, while uneven and erratic, shaped the emergent movement culture, tactical repertoires, intra-movement relations and, ultimately, the ebb and flow of movemen...
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Since 2001, community cohesion has been an English policy concern, with accompanying media discourse portraying a supposed failure by Muslims to integrate. Latterly, academia has foregrounded White majority attitudes towards ethnic... more
Since 2001, community cohesion has been an English policy concern, with accompanying media discourse portraying a supposed failure by Muslims to integrate. Latterly, academia has foregrounded White majority attitudes towards ethnic diversity, particularly those of the ‘White working class’. While questioning this categorisation, we present data on attitudes towards diversity from low income, mainly White areas within Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, a town portrayed in media discourse as one of the ‘failed spaces’ of multiculturalism. Drawing on mixed methods research, we present and discuss data that provide a complex message, seemingly confirming pessimistic analyses around ethnic diversity and predominantly White neighbourhoods but also highlighting an appetite within the same communities for greater and more productive inter-ethnic contact. Furthermore, anxieties about diversity and integration have largely failed to coalesce into broad support for organised anti-minority politics mani...
Research Interests: Sociology, Gender Studies, Multiculturalism, Politics, Community Cohesion, and 5 morePessimism, Hn, HT, Ethnic Group, and Hm
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ABSTRACT
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... Perspectives, (17:4) pp. 119-144; Schmid, AP (2004) 'Statistics on Terrorism: TheChallenge of Measuring Trends in Global Terrorism', Forum on Crime and Society, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (4:1) pp. 65-6 [4]... more
... Perspectives, (17:4) pp. 119-144; Schmid, AP (2004) 'Statistics on Terrorism: TheChallenge of Measuring Trends in Global Terrorism', Forum on Crime and Society, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (4:1) pp. 65-6 [4] This ...
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Activism in any social movement group is, as Deborah Gould observes, a project of collective ‘world-making’. It is about changing the world out there by influencing policy and public opinion, but is also about the way it transforms the... more
Activism in any social movement group is, as Deborah Gould observes, a project of collective ‘world-making’. It is about changing the world out there by influencing policy and public opinion, but is also about the way it transforms the lives of participants – activists generate new identities, cultures, social ties, rich and varied emotional experiences and interpretations of the world around them. Movements are more likely to be able to attract and sustain support when as projects of collective world-making they feel compelling to activists and would-be activists.
In this book Busher explores what has made activism in the English Defence League (EDL), an anti-Muslim protest movement that has staged demonstrations across the UK since 2009, so compelling to those who have chosen to march under its banner. Based on sixteen months of overt observation with grassroots activists, he explores how people became involved with the group; how they forged and intensified belief in the EDL cause; how they negotiated accusations that they were just another racist, far right group; and how grassroots EDL activism began to unravel during the course of 2011 but did not do so altogether. Providing a fresh insight as to how contemporary anti-minority protest movements work on the inside, this book will be of interest to students, scholars and activists working in the areas of British politics, extremism, social movements, community relations and current affairs more generally.
In this book Busher explores what has made activism in the English Defence League (EDL), an anti-Muslim protest movement that has staged demonstrations across the UK since 2009, so compelling to those who have chosen to march under its banner. Based on sixteen months of overt observation with grassroots activists, he explores how people became involved with the group; how they forged and intensified belief in the EDL cause; how they negotiated accusations that they were just another racist, far right group; and how grassroots EDL activism began to unravel during the course of 2011 but did not do so altogether. Providing a fresh insight as to how contemporary anti-minority protest movements work on the inside, this book will be of interest to students, scholars and activists working in the areas of British politics, extremism, social movements, community relations and current affairs more generally.
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The Council for European Studies (CES) Radicalism and Violence Network brings together scholars from multiple disciplines with an interest in radicalism and violence in Europe, whether that radicalism is associated broadly with... more
The Council for European Studies (CES) Radicalism and Violence Network brings together scholars from multiple disciplines with an interest in radicalism and violence in Europe, whether that radicalism is associated broadly with right-wing, left-wing, Islamist or other ideological currents. In 2015 the network organised a mini-symposium as part of the 2015 CES Annual Conference in Paris. Following on from the success of that mini-symposium, the network is now organising a further series of panels for the CES Annual Conference 2016 in Philadelphia, 14th-16th April.
Potential themes of interest include, but are not limited to:
The internal dynamics of radical movements
State and civil society responses to radical movements
The resilience of radical movements to attempts by state actors and opposition movements to inhibit their activities
Transnational dimensions of radical movements
Social media
Youth
Gender
The New Right: Ideological continuity, revisionism and adaptation to modern times
In the first instance we are requesting that those who wish to contribute to one of the network’s panels submit an abstract of no more than 300 words for consideration. Abstracts should be submitted no later than 13th September and sent to joel.busher@coventry.ac.uk.
Kind regards
Joel Busher, Alberto Spektorowski, Cynthia Miller-Idriss & Fabian Virchow
Potential themes of interest include, but are not limited to:
The internal dynamics of radical movements
State and civil society responses to radical movements
The resilience of radical movements to attempts by state actors and opposition movements to inhibit their activities
Transnational dimensions of radical movements
Social media
Youth
Gender
The New Right: Ideological continuity, revisionism and adaptation to modern times
In the first instance we are requesting that those who wish to contribute to one of the network’s panels submit an abstract of no more than 300 words for consideration. Abstracts should be submitted no later than 13th September and sent to joel.busher@coventry.ac.uk.
Kind regards
Joel Busher, Alberto Spektorowski, Cynthia Miller-Idriss & Fabian Virchow
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One of the challenges faced by AIDS service organisations seeking to engage with traditional leaders and community elders in Kavango, north-east Namibia, has been the popular view that the messages of the fight against HIV/AIDS contradict... more
One of the challenges faced by AIDS service organisations seeking to engage with traditional leaders and community elders in Kavango, north-east Namibia, has been the popular view that the messages of the fight against HIV/AIDS contradict local cultural values. However, there are indications that this has been changing. Staff and volunteers working with AIDS service organisations reported that growing numbers of traditional leaders were becoming involved in HIV/AIDS programmes, in particular supporting efforts to promote HIV testing and encourage more people to take up antiretroviral therapy (ART), which has been available in state hospitals in the region since 2005.This paper explores one of the factors that appear to be facilitating this broadening of participation in the fight against HIV/AIDS. The case is made that increasing familiarity with and confidence in ART has contributed to the emergence of an alternative set of signs around HIV/AIDS that is more culturally permissive and is not so conducive to social representations of a moral disjuncture between HIV/AIDS programmes and Kavango culture. This has created opportunities for traditional leaders and elders to more easily resolve the tensions between the recognised need to respond to “this disease of today”, and whilst still performing their role as guardians of local culture.This paper is based on ethnographic research conducted in Kavango over a period of 18 months during 2007–2008.
Research Interests: Psychology, Communication, Research Methodology, Leadership, Behavior, and 23 moreCulture, Developing Countries, Social behavior, Antiretroviral Therapy, Interviews, Humans, Organizations, Case Study, Female, Male, Namibia, Patient Compliance, Data Collection, Cultural value, Social Representation, HIV testing, Public health systems and services research, North East, Consumer Participation, Social Behavior, AIDS care, Value Orientation, and Socioeconomic Factors
Publisher: Routledge Studies in Fascism and the Far Right In recent years, Europe and America have witnessed a resurgence of the far right in the form of both party electoral support and street level protest movements, as well as an... more
Publisher: Routledge Studies in Fascism and the Far Right In recent years, Europe and America have witnessed a resurgence of the far right in the form of both party electoral support and street level protest movements, as well as an increase in hate crimes. There has also been an increase in right-wing nationalist politics and party success in other parts of the world too, including India. This comes at a time when 'extremism' more broadly defined, but including the far right, is also very much on the agenda for the media, public, policy makers, activists and academics. While there has been an upsurge in empirical research on the far right and extremism, there has been a comparative dearth of detailed discussion in relation to the methodological, ethical, political, personal, practical and professional issues and challenges that arise from it.
