From ISIS to (US) Insurrection: Exploring the Sociology of Knowledge on Extremism and Political Violence through Struggles for Expert Authority

从伊斯兰国到（美国）叛乱：通过专家权威的斗争探索极端主义和政治暴力的知识社会学

• 批准号: ES/Y008324/1
• 负责人: Dylan Marshall
• 金额: $ 13.05万
• 依托单位: Aberystwyth University
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Fellowship
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FY008324%2F1
• 关键词: ISIS; US; Insurrection; Exploring; Sociology

As major recent events, from Brexit to COVID-19 have revealed, the social and political construction of 'experts' and their 'expert knowledge' is pivotal in shaping outcomes and ways of understanding global challenges. However, the centrality of the contested nature of expertise that these events brought to the fore have also been playing out in the study of 'terrorism'. The Islamic State group's (IS) declaration of a 'caliphate' in 2014 led to a gold rush to provide expertise on the group. It attracted a plethora of different fields, institutions, and individuals producing knowledge and claiming authority on IS (academia, policy institutions, private sector analysts, among many others). However, unlike many spaces of specialised knowledge (e.g., medicine), which have highly regulated fields to demarcate who the 'experts' are (and crucially, are not), the study of 'terrorism', 'radicalisation' and 'counterterrorism' does not maintain such institutionalised regulation. My research has revealed that there is no consistency amongst IS knowledge producers and elite consumers (e.g., government, media) as to who is an 'expert' and what attributes constitute expert authority. This subsequent competition for recognition as an 'expert' and its 'winners' in-turn shapes dominant knowledge on how the group is understood and should be responded to.Consequently, my research sociologically analyses this period and the conditions of terrorism expertise after 2014. This began with mapping the landscape of IS experts, proceeding to trace how deep historical debates over knowledge on Islam, the Middle East and political violence have shaped contemporary dynamics amongst expertise and their state, media, and wider consumers. This uncovered a broad spectrum of heavily disputed sources of authority that aspiring experts draw upon. Breaking new ground in the study of terrorism, it showed how this 'marketplace of expertise' produces diverse strategies pursued by experts to produce or maintain their authority, impacting whose expertise is utilised by practitioners, policy makers and the media. This research also explored how both physical and virtual spaces (such as conferences and Twitter) also shape the production and circulation of knowledge on IS, the membership of the expert community, and their relations amongst each other and with consumers.This fellowship's further research aims to extend this analysis of the terrorism 'expert marketplace' from the IS-era to account for the transition towards new terrorism threats in the Anglo-American context (far right). I will explore the processes by which another wave of aspiring experts emerged fulfil a demand to understand the far right, and how established expertise have responded to a changing landscape of consumer demands amid shifting political conditions shaping the framing of this threat. By introducing new findings into my existing analysis and preparing multiple publications based on this collective research, this fellowship will develop and communicate new insights into how the West understands contemporary political violence. As an analysis of expertise within a major, contentious global challenge, it further contributes towards understanding ongoing change in the function and politics of expertise at-large.

正如从英国脱欧到Covid-19的最近发生的重大事件所揭示的那样，“专家”及其“专家知识”的社会和政治建构在塑造结果和理解全球挑战的方式方面至关重要。但是，在研究“恐怖主义”的研究中，这些事件引起的有争议的专业知识的中心地位也一直在发挥作用。伊斯兰国集团（IS）在2014年对“哈里发”的宣言导致了淘金热，以提供该集团的专业知识。它吸引了众多不同领域，机构和个人在IS（学术界，政策机构，私营部门分析师等）上产生知识的权威。但是，与许多专业知识的空间（例如，医学）不同，这些知识具有高度监管的领域，以划定“专家”是谁（也不是至关重要的是），“恐怖主义”，“激进主义”和“反恐”的研究确实如此不维护这种制度化的法规。我的研究表明，知识生产者和精英消费者（例如，政府，媒体）在谁是“专家”以及什么属性构成专家权威方面没有一致性。随后的认可为“专家”及其“获胜者”的竞争构成了关于该小组如何理解并应得到回应的主要知识。结果，我的研究在2014年以后的社会学分析了这一时期和恐怖主义专业知识的条件。这始于绘制IS专家的景观，从而追踪有关伊斯兰教知识，中东和政治暴力的深入历史辩论，塑造了当代的专业知识及其国家，媒体，媒体和更广泛的消费者的动态。这发现了有抱负的专家借鉴的广泛争议的权威来源。在恐怖主义研究中打破了新的基础，它展示了这种“专业知识市场”如何制定专家制定或维持其权威的各种策略，从而影响了其专业知识，其专业知识被从业者，政策制定者和媒体所利用。这项研究还探讨了物理和虚拟空间（例如会议和Twitter）如何塑造知识的生产和流通于IS，专家社区的成员以及它们之间以及与消费者之间的关系。将对恐怖主义“专家市场”的分析从IS-ER时代扩展，以解释在英美背景下（最右边）向新的恐怖主义威胁的过渡。我将探讨另一波有抱负的专家出现的过程满足了解最右翼的需求，以及建立专业知识如何应对不断变化的消费者景观，这在改变政治条件的情况下塑造了这种威胁的框架。通过将新发现引入我的现有分析并根据这项集体研究准备多个出版物，该奖学金将发展并传达有关西方如何理解当代政治暴力的新见解。作为对主要有争议的全球挑战中专业知识的分析，它进一步有助于理解一般专业知识的功能和政治的持续变化。