Context is crucial to understanding the causes of political violence and the form it takes. This book examines how time, space and supportive milieux decisively shape the pattern and pace of such violence.
While much of the work in this field focuses on individual psychology or radical ideology, Bosi, Ó Dochartaigh, Pisoiu and others take a fresh, innovative look at the importance of context in generating mobilisation and shaping patterns of violence.
The cases dealt with range widely across space and time, from Asia, Africa and Europe to the Americas, and from the Irish rebellion of 1916 through the Marxist insurgency of Sendero Luminoso to the ‘Invisible Commando’ of Côte d’Ivoire. They encompass a wide range of types of violence, from separatist guerrillas through Marxist insurgents and Islamist militants to nationalist insurrectionists and the distinctive forms of urban violence that have emerged at the boundary between crime and politics.
Chapters offer new theoretical perspectives on the decisive importance of the spatial and temporal contexts, and supportive milieux, in which parties to conflict are embedded, and from which they draw strength.
This is an excellent volume which shows why, when and how social contexts shape the dynamics of violence. Combining theoretical insights with meticulous and wide ranging empirical studies from all over the world, this book makes a powerful case for the centrality of relational analysis in the study of violent conflicts. -- Siniša Maleševic, University College Dublin
Time, space and milieux have for too long been silences in the research on social movements. This most welcome collection helps fill the gap through theoretical reflections and empirical evidence, and it contextualizes political violence, recognising the importance of contingency and agency within a relational approach.
-- Donatella della Porta, European University Institute
Lorenzo Bosi is Assistant Professor at the Scuola Normale Superiore. His research interests include social movements and political violence. He has published in several academic journals and is co-editor of Dynamics of Political Violence (Ashgate, 2014), and co-author of The Dynamics of Radicalization: A Relational Comparative Perspective (Oxford University Press, 2015). He is chair of the standing group on Political Violence of the European Consortium of Political Research.
Niall Ó Dochartaigh is Senior Lecturer in the School of Political Science and Sociology at the National University of Ireland Galway. He worked previously as a research officer with the International Conflict Research Centre of the University of Ulster and the United Nations University. He has published on conflict, negotiation, territory and new technologies in a range of journals and is the author of two other books: From Civil Rights to Armalites: Derry and the birth of the Irish Troubles (Cork 1997; Palgrave 2005) and Internet Research Skills (Sage 2002; 2007; 2012). He is convener of the Specialist Group on Peace and Conflict of the Political Studies Association of Ireland and a founding convener of the ECPR Standing Group on Political Violence. Further information is available at niallodoc.wordpress.com
Daniela Pisoiu is Researcher at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy (IFSH) at the University of Hamburg. She is the author of Islamist Radicalisation in Europe: An Occupational Change Process (Routledge, 2011) and editor of the forthcoming book Arguing Counterterrorism: New Perspectives (Routledge 2014). She currently researches on subcultural aspects of radicalisation and political violence in a comparative perspective and is more broadly interested in social movement theory, terrorism and political violence, critical terrorism studies, political extremism and EU and US security policies.
Aurélie Campana is Associate Professor of Political Science at Laval University. Since 2007 she holds the Canada Research Chair on Conflicts and Terrorism. She is also deputy director of the Peace and Security Program (Institut des Hautes Etudes Internationales, University of Laval), member of the Executive Committee of the Canadian Research Network on Terrorism, Security and Society, and member of the Centre International de Criminologie Comparée. Her recent research has focused on terrorism in internal conflicts, the diffusion of violence across movements and borders, and discourses on terrorism and counterterrorism. Her research has appeared in numerous journals, including Civil Wars; Studies in Conflict and Terrorism; Terrorism and Political Violence; Critical Studies on Terrorism; La Revue Française de Science Politique, and Études Internationales.
Jovana Carapic has recently defended her doctorate at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. Her research focuses on the conceptualisations of ‘authority’ with respect to various types of armed groups and what this means for how they interact with the state. She is also interested in issues of urbanisation and urban violence, and was part of the research team for the Urban Tipping Point project, run from the University of Manchester and funded by an award from the ESRC/DFID Joint Scheme for Research on International Development (Poverty Alleviation).
Donagh Davis is a PhD candidate at the Department of Political and Social Sciences (SPS) at the European University Institute, Florence. His interests include historical sociology, the sociology of revolutions, and contentious politics. His doctoral research is a case study of the early twentieth-century Irish independence struggle. The dissertation considers the episode in relation to different levels of causation, and their interaction – from long-term structural factors, to medium-term conjunctural circumstance, and short-term contingency and volition. His most recent publication is ‘Revolution’ which appeared in Gregory Claeys (ed.) Encyclopedia of Modern Political Thought Vol. II (2013), Thousand Oaks, CA: CQ Press, pp. 694–700.
Luis de la Calle is Professor and researcher at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE). Before taking up this position, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Juan March Institute. He wrote his dissertation at the European University Institute, Florence. His work focuses on the study of the dynamics of violence of terrorist groups and on insurgencies more generally. His research has appeared in journals such as Journal of Conflict Resolution; Politics and Society; International Studies Quarterly; European Journal of Political Research, and The Annual Review of Political Science.
Jérôme Drevon is a PhD Candidate at Durham University and a Junior Research Fellow of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). He studies the evolution of the Egyptian militant groups al-jama’a al-islamiya (the Islamic Group) and jama’a al-jihad (the Jihad Group). He has interviewed many of their leaders and senior members in Egypt, as well as dozens of militants and sympathisers. He has published a forthcoming article in Digest of Middle East Studies and submitted two additional articles on the emergence of ex-jihadi political parties in Egypt and on salafi jihadi socialisation among salafi youths in Egypt. In addition to this he has written for Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and presented his research at several international conferences in Europe and North America.
Luca Falciola is a Research Fellow in History of Political Institutions at the Catholic University of Milan. He received his PhD in History from Sciences Po, Paris, in 2011 and in 2012–13 he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale’s Program on Order, Conflict, and Violence. His research interests embrace the logic of political violence, the relationship between state and protest movements, and the history of leftist revolutionary groups. He has written various papers about Italian, US, and Romanian history that have been published in academic journals such as Contemporanea and Ricerche di storia politica.
Jake Lomax is a doctoral researcher at the University of East Anglia School of International Development. His work focuses on the micro dynamics of civil wars, especially the nature of wartime threats, displacement decisions and other civilian protection strategies, and rationales for wartime violence against civilians. Prior to his PhD, Jake spent five years working for local and international NGOs in London, Kenya and the occupied Palestinian territory, and he now works primarily on West African conflicts.
Stefan Malthaner is Assistant Professor at Aarhus University. Before coming to Aarhus, he spent three years as Marie Curie Fellow and Max Weber Fellow at the EUI, worked as a researcher at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence (IKG) at University of Bielefeld, Germany, and was a member of the Micropolitics of Armed Groups research group at Humboldt University, Berlin. His research focuses on political violence and social (especially Islamist) movements, from a comparative perspective. He is the author of Mobilizing the Faithful: Militant Islamist Groups and their Constituencies (Campus, 2011), and co-editor of Control of Violence (Springer U.S., 2011), Radikale Milieus (Campus, 2012), and Dynamics of Political Violence (Ashgate 2014). Among the large-scale academic events he has organised or co-organised were the conferences Radicalization and De-Radicalization (ZiF, Bielefeld, 2001), Radical Milieus (University of Bielefeld, 2011), and Micropolitics of Armed Groups (Humboldt University, Berlin, 2007).
Joseph Ruane was Professor at the School of Sociology and Philosophy, University College Cork, until 2010. During 2011–2016 he is Visiting Professor of Sociology at University College Dublin. His research interests include theorising social and historical change; sociology of state- and nation-building; comparative colonial, ethnic, religious and centre–periphery relationships, and sociology of contemporary transition. Among his most important publications are The Dynamics of Conflict in Northern Ireland (1996) and Ethnicity and Religion: Intersections and Comparisons (2010).
Patricia Steinhoff is Professor of Sociology at the University of Hawaii. She studies social movements in Japan. Her research has been published in Mobilization; Contemporary Japan, Journal of the German Institute for Japanese Studies in Tokyo; Militantisme et Répression; Social Psychology Quarterly; Qualitative Sociology, as well as in numerous edited volumes. She recently edited the book Going to Court to Change Japan: Social Movements and the Law (2014).
Jennifer Todd is Professor at the School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin. She holds a BA from the University of Kent, and an MA and PhD from the University of Boston. Todd is a member of the Royal Irish Academy and Director of the Institute for British Irish Studies at UCD. Her research interests include ethnicity, ethnic conflict, collective identity, and Northern Ireland. Among her most important publications are The Dynamics of Conflict in Northern Ireland (1996) and Ethnicity and Religion: Intersections and Comparisons (2010).
Lorenzo Zamponi is a PhD candidate in Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute, working on a research project on the relationship between collective memories and social movements. His research interests include public memory, contentious politics, student movements, anti-austerity activism and media analysis. Among his most recent publications: ‘“Why don’t Italians occupy?” Hypotheses on a failed mobilisation’ (Social Movement Studies 2012); ‘Protest and policing on October 15th, global day of action: the Italian case’ (with Donatella della Porta, Policing and Society 2013).
Gilda Zwerman is Professor of Sociology at SUNY, Old Westbury. She studies social movements with a specialisation in radicalisation and political violence. Her research has been published in the journals Qualitative Sociology, Social Justice, Feminist Review and Mobilization as well as in co-edited volumes on political repression, left-wing protest, and protest cultures.
