Accessing, Defining and Complicity: Reflections on a Framework for Research on Activism
The volume Explaining Extreme Belief and Behavior: Theoretical, Methodological, and Ethical Challenges edited by Rik Peels and Lorne L. Dawson, turns the gaze of extremism research on the extremism research itself: fundamental theoretical and contextual issues, their pitfalls and possibilities, related methodological issues, the relationship between understanding and explaining, qualitative and quantitative data, and related empirical issues and challenges. The volume itself is a rich repository of questions and tools.
I have had the honour of contributing with a chapter based upon the research I have done for Islamic Militant Activism in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands – “islands in a sea of disbelief’. In my chapter Accessing the Field, Defining People, and Exploring Extended Complicity: Reflections on a Framework for Ethnographic Research with Militant Activists, I start from some observations about that publication.
Abstract:
In research on violent activism, extremism, radicalization, or jihadism, there appears to be a lack of firsthand or internalist approaches. This lack conflicts with the idea that in order to understand radicalization or extremism, we need to go beyond texts, secondhand interviews, and so on. It is thought that fieldwork may bring more or new understandings as to why people affiliate themselves with militant groups and engage in political violence. Yet, it is often difficult to gain access to these groups because of ideological constraints or suspicion of researchers being spies. “How did you get access to the field?” is therefore a frequently asked question. Based upon ethnographic work that will be discussed in detail, this chapter takes these observations as a starting point and argues for a relational approach that recognizes that state, media, and academia are not outside the field but constitutive in constructing it.
de Koning, Martijn, ‘Accessing the Field, Defining People, and Exploring Extended Complicity: Reflections on a Framework for Ethnographic Research with Militant Activists’, in Rik Peels, and Lorne L Dawson (eds), Explaining Extreme Belief and Behavior: Theoretical, Methodological, and Ethical Challenges (New York, NY, 2026; online edn, Oxford Academic, 20 Jan. 2026), https://doi.org/10.1093/9780197768914.003.0009 .
Peels, Rik, and Lorne L Dawson (eds), Explaining Extreme Belief and Behavior: Theoretical, Methodological, and Ethical Challenges (New York, NY, 2026; online edn, Oxford Academic, 20 Jan. 2026), https://doi.org/10.1093/9780197768914.001.0001
