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

正如从英国退欧到新冠肺炎等近期重大事件所揭示的那样，社会和政治上构建的‘专家’及其‘专业知识’对于塑造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争议性的中心地位，也一直在“恐怖主义”的研究中发挥作用。2014年，伊斯兰国(IS)宣布成立“哈里发国”，引发了一场为该组织提供专业知识的淘金热。它吸引了太多不同的领域、机构和个人在IS上产生知识并声称拥有权威(学术界、政策机构、私营部门分析师等)。然而，与许多专业知识领域(例如，医学)不同的是，这些领域有严格监管的领域来划分谁是“专家”(关键是，不是)，对“恐怖主义”、“激进化”和“反恐”的研究不会维持这种制度化的监管。我的研究表明，在谁是“专家”以及哪些属性构成专家权威的问题上，IS知识生产者和精英消费者(如政府、媒体)之间没有一致性。随后为被承认为“专家”而展开的竞争及其“赢家”反过来形成了关于如何理解和应对该组织的主导知识。因此，我的研究从社会学的角度分析了这一时期以及2014年后恐怖主义专家的状况。这从绘制IS专家的版图开始，接着追踪关于伊斯兰教、中东和政治暴力知识的深刻历史辩论如何塑造了专业人士及其国家、媒体和更广泛的消费者之间的当代动态。这揭示了一系列备受争议的权威来源，这些权威是有抱负的专家所利用的。它在恐怖主义研究方面开辟了新的天地，展示了这个“专业知识市场”如何产生专家追求的各种战略，以产生或维护他们的权威，影响谁的专业知识被从业者、政策制定者和媒体利用。这项研究还探索了物理和虚拟空间(如会议和推特)如何也塑造了关于IS的知识的生产和流通，专家社区的成员，以及它们彼此之间和与消费者的关系。这项研究的进一步研究旨在扩大对IS时代恐怖主义“专家市场”的分析，以解释在英美背景下向新恐怖主义威胁的转变(极右)。我将探讨另一波有抱负的专家涌现以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塑造这一威胁的框架之际，成熟的专业知识如何应对不断变化的消费者需求格局。通过在我现有的分析中引入新的发现，并在这一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门知识的分析，它进一步有助于理解专门知识的职能和整个政治领域正在发生的变化。

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.