Ramazan Dicle

13 April 2011, DIIS, Copenhagen

The term ‘radicalization’ has sounded very scary and improbable to tackle due to such provocative actions as  the attacks on Washington D.C. and New York in September 2001, the 11 March 2004 bombings in Madrid’ the 7 July 2005 bombings in London, as well as the November 2005 riots in the suburbs of Paris. And the researchers, politicians, academics and the authorities have felt quite unsecure about talking and working on the concern. Though it was initially misrepresented and studied as a part of Islamic nature, the later events have shown that the term doesn’t actually belong to a particular group, nation, culture or religion.

First, the title of the seminar seemed very intriguing as it says ‘Listening to Radicals’ which seemed to be quite challenging, empathetic and different from the previous point of views over radicalization. Surprisingly and in admiration, I found the project conducted by British Council and University of St. Andrews very promising and comprehensive. The project, called the European Survey on Youth Mobilization (ESYM) possess diverse amount of data and results to comprehend and analyze the radicalization. Besides it would help those academics, politicians and all the others related to tackle the issue, which was initially realized by the seminar itself as having a politician and a researcher.

The seminar was organized by The Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) and the British Council in Copenhagen. The seminar was given by Jeffrey Stevenson Murer, who is the Principal Investigator for ESYM, and is the Lecturer on Collective Violence appointed to the Schools of International Relations and Psychology at the University of St Andrews, Scotland.  Besides, the seminar included two important figures as Simon Turner, senior researcher at DIIS and Henriette Korf, Deputy Head of Division, Division for Cohesion and Prevention of Radicalization, Ministry of Refuge, Immigration and Integration Affairs. The seminar proceeded in a very illuminating and cordial environment.

The report of European Survey on Youth Mobilization (ESYM) is important and different from the previous studies in those aspects I have listed here:

• The ESYM explores the concept of political radicalization in its many different forms and manifestations. It does not presume that those who hold political or social views associated with “radical positions” are misguided, defective, or otherwise pathological. Rather the Survey treats these views as extreme positions relative to a specific cultural and political milieu that is characterized by the dynamic interplay of many actors including policy makers and agents of the state.

• By examining how communities create their own sense of belonging and determine their own symbolic and performative borders it is possible to see the larger social dynamics of recognition and identity formation. Thus it becomes possible to see motivations to hold “radical” political and social views in a larger social context and not in a limited view of individual or rational decision-making.

•  This application of the fundamental conceptual underpinnings of social psychology shifts the focus from understanding individual motivations to that of understanding group processes and inter-group conflict.

•  This application of ethnographic, anthropological and social psychological techniques and methodologies transforms the study from one which objectifies these communities, treating them within a single dimension, to an inter-subjective study which suggests both the state and these communities possess agency, capable of responding to one another and capable of recognizing one another.

• The organization of the study itself is innovative and multidisciplinary, taking cures from political science, assumptions from Social Identity Theory in social psychology, life event calendars from demography, social mapping from human geography, and network analysis from sociology. In this way the ESYM employs sophisticated, cutting-edge social scientific techniques and methodologies, in a comparative approach that will yield new insights into patterns and modes of transnational transmission of identity and performance.

by Ramazan Dicle

(For further information on ESYM report, see http://www.diis.dk/graphics/Events/2011/Youth%20British%20Council.pdf)