EXTREMIST RECRUITMENT AND EXTREMIST SENTIMENT NORMALIZATION

On November 23, 2022, Dr. Cynthia Miller-Idriss, Director of the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL) at American University, presented on Extremist Recruitment and Extremist Sentiment Normalization. The presentation was followed by a question-and-answer period with questions from the audience and CASIS Vancouver executives. The key points discussed were conceptualisation and context of far-right extremism, the development and trends of the movement globally, and suggested directions for prevention.   Received: 2022-12-27Revised: 2023-01-0

Everyday nationhood

Examines nationalism 'from below' in an exploration of four ways that nationhood is produced & reproduced in everyday life. The process by which the nation is constituted & legitimated as a discursive construct through 'talking the nation' is described, along with ways that nationhood frames the choices that citizens make ('choosing the nation'). The everyday meanings & invocations of national symbols constitute 'performing the nation,' while 'consuming the nation' refers to the constitution & expression of nationhood in everyday consumption practices

Socializing One Health: an innovative strategy to investigate social and behavioral risks of emerging viral threats

In an effort to strengthen global capacity to prevent, detect, and control infectious diseases in animals and people, the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Emerging Pandemic Threats (EPT) PREDICT project funded development of regional, national, and local One Health capacities for early disease detection, rapid response, disease control, and risk reduction. From the outset, the EPT approach was inclusive of social science research methods designed to understand the contexts and behaviors of communities living and working at human-animal-environment interfaces considered high-risk for virus emergence. Using qualitative and quantitative approaches, PREDICT behavioral research aimed to identify and assess a range of socio-cultural behaviors that could be influential in zoonotic disease emergence, amplification, and transmission. This broad approach to behavioral risk characterization enabled us to identify and characterize human activities that could be linked to the transmission dynamics of new and emerging viruses. This paper provides a discussion of implementation of a social science approach within a zoonotic surveillance framework. We conducted in-depth ethnographic interviews and focus groups to better understand the individual- and community-level knowledge, attitudes, and practices that potentially put participants at risk for zoonotic disease transmission from the animals they live and work with, across 6 interface domains. When we asked highly-exposed individuals (ie. bushmeat hunters, wildlife or guano farmers) about the risk they perceived in their occupational activities, most did not perceive it to be risky, whether because it was normalized by years (or generations) of doing such an activity, or due to lack of information about potential risks. Integrating the social sciences allows investigations of the specific human activities that are hypothesized to drive disease emergence, amplification, and transmission, in order to better substantiate behavioral disease drivers, along with the social dimensions of infection and transmission dynamics. Understanding these dynamics is critical to achieving health security--the protection from threats to health-- which requires investments in both collective and individual health security. Involving behavioral sciences into zoonotic disease surveillance allowed us to push toward fuller community integration and engagement and toward dialogue and implementation of recommendations for disease prevention and improved health security

Learning to belong: Citizenship, schooling and national identity in contemporary Germany.

A new cultural formation of national belonging is emerging among young, working-class Germans, in which culture dominates biology in explanations of who belongs in Germany. Relying on ethnographic research conducted in three vocational schools in Berlin over 18 months in 2000--2002, including classroom observations, semi-structured interviews with students and teachers, and focus groups with students, I demonstrate that these students' cultural articulation of the nation radically redefines a dominant narrative of German national belonging based on blood or ethnic heritage. Despite the seeming openness to difference in these young people's constructions of national belonging, I find that the criteria for belonging are often ethnocentric, prejudiced, and in some cases, culturally racist. While most of these young Germans assert that anyone born in Germany is German, this belonging is predicated on cultural assimilation to a German way of life. In expressing resentment for the Mosque in the cityscape, for the loudness of foreigners on the subway, or for the cultural practice of hijab , these young people demonstrate exclusionary views and behaviors. Schools and teachers, unprepared for this form of national chauvinism, miss culture's significance in their efforts to address national identity or xenophobia. Teachers' efforts are further complicated by the persistence of another dominant narrative about German national belonging, which is characterized by a pervasive collective shame. As a consequence of the Holocaust and an accompanying anti-nationalist consensus invalidating national pride as a legitimate expression of national belonging, young people wind up conceiving their nation in terms that often make the radical right wing seem attractive. By limiting space for rethinking the nation, teachers and authorities unintentionally deny the possibility for reconstructing a sense of national identity that might enable a multicultural sense of Germany to develop. I conclude with suggestions for how this new expression of difference, within the nation, might be incorporated better into schooling German citizens. While classroom instruction and discussions about historical racism and the atrocities of the Holocaust are necessary and important, I argue that educational practice should also incorporate efforts to confront racism in the contemporary setting.Ph.D.EducationEducational sociologySocial SciencesSocial structureUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/123609/2/3096114.pd

Transnational higher education: offshore campuses in the Middle East

This paper maps the landscape of transnational higher education in the Middle East, focusing in particular on the recent expansion of satellite, branch, and offshore educational institutions and programs that foreign institutions have set up in the region. Of the estimated 100 branch campuses currently operating world- wide, over one-third are in the Arab region and the majority have opened within the last decade; two dozen additional transnational programs and universities exist in the region as well. Very little research has been conducted on these new institutions, however, raising many questions for scholars in education. This paper traces reasons for the rapid growth of the transnational higher education model in the Arab states and discusses the explanatory power for this phenomenon of the two major prevailing theories in comparative and international education. We argue that neither neoinstitutional theories about global norm diffusion nor culturalist theories about the local politics of educational borrowing and transfer sufficiently explain this phenomenon, and call instead for a regional approach. We also raise questions for further inquiry.published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe

The "here and now" of everyday nationhood

International audienc

Subversive Online Activity Predicts Susceptibility to Persuasion by Far-Right Extremist Propaganda

Despite the widespread assumption that online misbehavior can affect outcomes related to political extremism, no extant research has provided empirical evidence to this effect. To redress this gap in the literature, we performed two studies in which we explore the relationship between subversive online activities and proclivity for persuasion by far-right extremist propaganda. Study 1 (N = 404) demonstrates that when individuals are exposed to far-right ‘scientific racism’ propaganda, subversive online activity is significantly associated with feelings of gratification, attribution of credibility to and intention to support the propaganda’s source, as well as decreased resistance to the propaganda itself. To verify these findings across thematic domains, Study 2 (N = 396) focused on far-right propaganda consistent with ‘male supremacy.’ Results in Study 2 replicated those from Study 1. These findings have implications for understanding subversive online activity, vis-à-vis its association with one’s susceptibility to persuasion by far-right extremist propaganda