SCHOLARLY PERSPECTIVE
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THIS PAGE CONTAINS SCHOLARLY ARTICLES ON TOPICS OF INTEREST, WITH REGULAR UPDATES
TRUSTING THE MISTRUSTED: NORWEGIAN SOCIAL WORKERS' STRATEGIES IN PREVENTING RADICALIZATION AND VIOLENT EXTREMISM
June 28, 2019
"Social workers are a part of the wider counter-terrorism efforts in many European countries, such as the United Kingdom, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Belgium.While there are several theoretical and discursive studies on social workers’involvement in preventing violent extremism, few studies have explored and analyzed how these prevention workers understand radicalization and the strategies and approaches they employ. This paper addresses this research gap with findings from a qualitative study that utilized data from 17 individual in- depth interviews and two focus-group interviews of experienced social workers doing indicated prevention work against violent extremism in Norway. Goffman’s frame analysis and Weber and Carter’s theory on the construction of trust are applied to the findings."
KNOWING WHAT TO DO: ACADEMIC AND PRACTITIONER UNDERSTANDING OF HOW TO COUNTER VIOLENT RADICALIZATION
June 25, 2019
"In recent years, the number of counter-radicalization and deradicalization programs has steadily increased, and they belong now to the standard counterterrorism and conflict resolution repertoire of many countries. How is the personnel of these programs trained to perform its duties and what does this tell about the relationship between academic and practitioner understandings of countering radicalization and deradicalization? This article aims at answering these questions by comparing the state of the art in evidence-based radicalization and deradicalization research with a detailed analysis of primary data concerning twelve training courses for personnel in this field."
DERADICALISATION AND DISENGAGEMENT IN SOMALIA
January 2019
"This report presents detailed information about the Serendi programme, as well as wider empirical evidence drawn from interviews with 129 current and former residents on issues such as how and why they enlisted in Al-Shabaab in the first place, how and why they disengaged, and their experiences of reintegration post-exit. While closely related prison-based initiatives have become increasingly common over recent years in countries such as Indonesia, Nigeria, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and Yemen, Serendi-style semi-open residential rehabilitation centres for ‘low-risk’ former violent extremists remain comparatively rare. The authors of this report advocate for cautiously upscaling such efforts in Somalia, as well as exploring the possibilities to replicate this form of programming in other comparable environments."
CAN EDUCATION COUNTER VIOLENT RELIGIOUS
EXTREMISM?
May 25, 2016
"Violent religious extremism is a global concern today. As governments prepare their counter- terrorism policies, many focus solely on reactive measures such as military action and surveillance measures – hard power – that are responsive to individuals who are already radicalized. This paper argues that education should be incorporated into such policies as apreventive measure that not only makes students resilient citizens but can also address the psychological, emotional and intellectual appeal of narratives – soft power – that terrorists purport."
INDIVIDUAL DISENGAGEMENT AND DERADICALIZATION PILOT PROGRAM IN TURKEY: METHODS AND OUTCOMES
2016
"Counterterrorism strategies that mainly rely on hard power have long been used to defeat terrorism. In recent years, governments have begun incorporating soft power approaches not as a substitute, but as a complementary strategy to be applied alongside hard power approaches. Disengagement and deradicalization programs are important components of soft power approaches, and are regarded as significant contributors to traditional counterterrorism methods. In this paper, we analyze a locally developed counterterrorism program in Turkey, which resulted in the disengagement and deradicalization of hundreds of militants."