The Sociology of Violent Extremism

Suraj Lakhani is an academic at the University of Sussex. Alongside this, he holds the roles of Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, Research Fellow at VOX-Pol, and Ambassador for Women in Games. Suraj is also part of: the Steering Board of the Extremism and Gaming Research Network (EGRN), the Leadership Team at VOX-Pol; the Christchurch Call New Technologies Working Group; the Gaming Community of Practice Working Group at the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT), the European Working Group on Radicalization, Extremism, and Terrorism at the European Society of Criminology; and the UK Home Office's Accelerated Capability Environment (ACE) Research Network. His research interests include video-gaming and violent extremism, violent extremism and the internet, radicalisation, and counter-terrorism policy. He has published numerous peer reviewed journal articles in internationally recognised academic publications, reports for international organisations such as theEuropean Commission, and has several book chapters in edited collections.Amarnath Amarasingam is an Associate Professor in the School of Religion, and is cross-appointed to the Department of Political Studies, at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada. He works in the areas of social/extremist movements, radicalization and terrorism, conspiracy theories, online communities, diaspora politics, post-war reconstruction, and the sociology of religion. He is the author of Pain, Pride, and Politics: Sri Lankan Tamil Activism in Canada, and the co-editor of Stress Tested: The COVID-19 Pandemic and Canadian National Security and Sri Lanka: The Struggle for Peace in the Aftermath of War. He has also published over 60 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, has presented papers at over 100 national and international conferences, and has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, The Atlantic, and Foreign Affairs. He has been interviewed on CNN,PBS Newshour, CBC, BBC, and a variety of other media outlets.

• Introduction (Suraj Lakhani and Amarnath Amarasingam)Part I: Extremism and IdentityChapter 1: An Existentialist Approach to Violent Extremism (Maja Touzari Greenwood)Chapter 2: What's in the Group? Social Identity, Fused Identities, Role Transitions and Exiting Violent Extremism (Daniel Koehler)Chapter 3: Digital Games as Cultural Assets of Influence (Rachel Kowert and Alex Newhouse)Part II: Emotion, Gender, and Group DynamicsChapter 4: The Role of Emotions in the Radicalisation Process (Mary-Ann Cherry and Sandy Schumann)Chapter 5: Undercover: A Theoretical Framework on Women Gender Passing in Pro-Islamic State Online Spaces (Meili Criezis)Chapter 6: Expressed Sentiment in Online Channels: Communication and Emotion in the Buffalo and Bratislava Attacks (Marc-André Argentino, Kurt Braddock and Erin Saltman)Chapter 7: Microsociology and Violent Extremism: The 2014 Lindt Café Siege (Chris Winter)Chapter 8: ''You think that you'd get laid if it wasn't for advancements in technology'?: A Sociological Analysis of Subordinate Masculinity in Involuntary Celibate Communities (Jade Hutchinson, Kenton Bell and Bharath Ganesh)Part III: Framing, Performance, and IdeologyChapter 9: Far-Right Extremism and the Sociology of Race and Racism (Aaron Winter)Chapter 10: Interrogating Insurgent Ideologies through Framing Theory: The Case of the North Caucasus Insurgency (Mark Youngman)Chapter 11: The Hero with a Thousand Faces: Applying the 'Hero's Journey' to Jihadist Propaganda (Ashton Kingdon and Craig Webber)Chapter 12: Using Bourdieu's Theoretical Toolkit - of Habitus, Capital and Field - to Advance Understanding of Radical Milieus (Joel Busher)