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

从英国脱欧到2019冠状病毒病等近期重大事件表明，“专家”的社会和政治建构及其“专业知识”对于形成结果和理解全球挑战的方式至关重要。然而，这些事件所带来的专业知识的争议性的中心地位也在“恐怖主义”的研究中发挥了作用。2014年，伊斯兰国组织（IS）宣布建立“哈里发国”，这引发了一场为该组织提供专业知识的淘金热。它吸引了大量不同的领域、机构和个人（学术界、政策机构、私营部门分析师等），为IS提供知识和主张权威。然而，与许多专业知识领域（如医学）不同，这些领域有高度监管的领域来划分谁是“专家”（关键是，谁不是），对“恐怖主义”、“激进化”和“反恐”的研究并没有保持这种制度化的监管。我的研究表明，在谁是“专家”以及什么属性构成专家权威方面，信息系统知识生产者和精英消费者（如政府、媒体）之间没有一致性。随后的“专家”和“赢家”的竞争反过来又形成了关于如何理解和应该如何回应这个群体的主导知识。因此，我的研究从社会学角度分析了这一时期和2014年之后的恐怖主义专业情况。首先是绘制IS专家的景观图，接着追溯关于伊斯兰、中东和政治暴力知识的历史辩论是如何深刻地影响了专家及其国家、媒体和更广泛的消费者之间的当代动态。这揭示了有抱负的专家所借鉴的广泛的有争议的权威来源。它在恐怖主义研究中开辟了新的领域，展示了这种“专业知识市场”如何产生专家追求的各种策略，以产生或维持他们的权威，影响从业者，政策制定者和媒体使用谁的专业知识。这项研究还探讨了物理和虚拟空间（如会议和Twitter）如何塑造信息系统知识的生产和流通，专家社区的成员，以及他们彼此之间和与消费者的关系。该奖学金的进一步研究旨在扩展对美国时代的恐怖主义“专家市场”的分析，以解释英美背景下向新恐怖主义威胁的过渡（最右）。我将探讨另一波有抱负的专家是如何满足理解极右翼的需求的过程，以及在不断变化的政治条件下，现有的专业知识是如何应对不断变化的消费者需求的。通过在我现有的分析中引入新的发现，并在此集体研究的基础上准备多份出版物，该奖学金将发展和交流关于西方如何理解当代政治暴力的新见解。作为对一个重大的、有争议的全球挑战中的专业知识的分析，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。

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.