50 research outputs found
On the Permissibility of Homicidal Violence: Perspectives from Former U.S. White Supremacists
Drawing upon in-depth life-history interviews with 91 North American-based former white supremacists, we examine how participants perceive homicidal violence as either an appropriate or inappropriate political strategy. Based on the current findings, participants considered homicidal violence as largely inappropriate due to moral concerns and its politically ineffective nature but also discussed how homicidal violence could be an appropriate defensive measure in RAHOWA (Racial Holy War) or through divine mandate. Capturing how white supremacists frame the permissibility of homicidal violence is a step toward better understanding the âupper limitâ or thresholds for violence among members who are trying to construct and negotiate a collective identity that involves violent and aggressive worldviews
Perspectives on âGiving Backâ: A Conversation Between Researcher and Refugee
Our chapterââPerspectives on âgiving backâ: A conversation between researcher and refugeeââoffers personal reflections on the ethics of research with refugees and what it means for researchers to âgive backâ to refugee participants beyond âpolicy impactâ. Written as a dialogue between an academic and a Rohingya refugee youth leader, we explore the blurry lines between academic work and advocacy when the issues of refugee protection are pressing, as well as the appropriateness of researchers giving monetary donations and volunteering for refugee causes as payback for data. In this chapter, we also examine what it means to build trust and relationships between researchers and refugees, and how too often researchers fail to develop meaningful research interactions with refugee participants who share their time, energy and personal stories of vulnerability
Ethics, empathy and fear in research on violent conflict
The discussion of ethics in the social sciences focuses on âdoing no harmâ and âgiving backâ to research participants, but does not explore the challenges of empathy and fear in research with participants in political violence and war. Drawing on 180 in-depth interviews on the Georgian-Abkhaz war of 1992-1993 collected over eight months between 2010 and 2013 primarily in Abkhazia, but also Georgia and Russia, I argue that researchers can come to empathize with some but fear other participants in past and present violence. These emotional responses can influence researchersâ ability to probe and interpret interviews and respondentsâ ability to surpass strong positions to explore dilemmas of participation in violence. By empathizing with not only âvictimsâ and ânon-fightersâ as I had expected based on my pre-existing moral-conceptual categories, but also participants in the war, I found that individuals adopted multiple overlapping roles and shifted between these roles in the changing conditions of violence. In contrast, failing to empathize with and fearing those who continued to participate in violence at the time of my interviews limited my ability to fully appreciate the complexity of their participation, but shed light on the context of violence in contemporary Abkhazia. This analysis shows that reflection on the role of empathy and fear in shaping our interactions with research participants can help advance our understanding of participation in violence and this difficult research context
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Social Movements and International Relations: A Relational Framework
Social movements are increasingly recognized as significant features of contemporary world politics, yet to date their treatment in international relations theory has tended to obfuscate the considerable diversity of these social formations, and the variegated interactions they may establish with state actors and different structures of world order. Highlighting the difficulties conventional liberal and critical approaches have in transcending conceptions of movements as moral entities, the article draws from two under-exploited literatures in the study of social movements in international relations, the English School and Social Systems Theory, to specify a wider range of analytical interactions between different categories of social movements and of world political structures. Moreover, by casting social movement phenomena as communications, the article opens international relations to consideration of the increasingly diverse trajectories and second-order effects produced by social movements as they interact with states, intergovernmental institutions, and transnational actors
Does Gender Matter in the United States Far-Right?
This article seeks to explain why it is difficult to understand how gender matters in the right, and suggest an analytic agenda for scholars who seek to do so
Women of the Klan: racism and gender in the 1920s
Ignorant. Brutal. Male. One of these stereotypes of the Ku Klux Klan offer a misleading picture. In Women of the Klan , sociologist Kathleen Blee unveils an accurate portrait of a racist movement that appealed to ordinary people throughout the country. In so doing, she dismantles the popular notion that politically involved women are always inspired by pacifism, equality, and justice."All the better people," a former Klanswoman assures us, were in the Klan. During the 1920s, perhaps half a million white native-born Protestant women joined the Women's Ku Klux Klan (WKKK). Like their male counterparts, Klanswomen held reactionary views on race, nationality, and religion. But their perspectives on gender roles were often progressive. The Klan publicly asserted that a women's order could safeguard women's suffrage and expand their other legal rights. Privately the WKKK was working to preserve white Protestant supremacy.Blee draws from extensive archival research and interviews with former Klan members and victims to underscore the complexity of extremist right-wing political movements. Issues of women's rights, she argues, do not fit comfortably into the standard dichotomies of "progressive" and "reactionary." These need to be replaced by a more complete understanding of how gender politics are related to the politics of race, religion, and class
Inside organized racism: women in the hate movement
Kathleen M. Blee's disturbing and provocative look at the hidden world of organized racism focuses on women, the newest recruiting targets of racist groups and crucial to their campaign for racial supremacy. Through personal interviews with women active in the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazi groups, Christian Identity sects, and white power skinhead gangs across the United States, Blee dispels many misconceptions of organized racism. Women are seldom pushed into the racist movement by any compelling interest, belief, or need, she finds. Most are educated. Only the rare woman grew up poor. Most were not raised in abusive families. Most women did not follow men into the world of organized racism. Inside Organized Racism offers a fascinating examination of the submerged social relations and the variety of racist identities that lie behind the apparent homogeneity of the movement. Following up her highly praised study of the women in the 1920s Ku Klux Klan, Blee discovers that many of today's racist women combine dangerous racist and anti-Semitic agendas with otherwise mainstream lives. Few of the women she interviews had strong racist or anti-Semitic views before becoming associated with racist groups. Rather, they learned a virulent hatred of racial minorities and anti-Semitic conspiratorial beliefs by being in racist groups. The only national sample of a broad spectrum of racist activists and the only major work on women racists, this well-written and important book also sheds light on how gender relationships shape participation in the movement as a whole
How Racial Violence Is Provoked and Channeled
This paper seeks to explain the extraordinary violence of modern-day organized white supremacism in the United States. We begin on a conceptual level by distinguishing the racial ideologies and violence associated with modern racist movements from the racism and racial violence expressed in daily life in highly racialized and racially unequal societies. We then move to an empirical level by using our interviews with a broad set of former racist activists to explore how violence is caused byâand also can causeâthe vicious racist ideologies of modern white supremacism