Mobilized Violence. a Sociological Framework for the Analysis of Radicalisation and Political Violence

The paper offers a new research perspective on processes of radicalisation and the emergence of political violence in Europe. The proposed approach combines knowledge from conventionally separate fields of sociological expertise, such as terrorism studies, social movement theory, and the sociology of violence. Synthesizing these literatures where they touch on radicalization processes and political violence—drawing insights from social theory and recent developments in the sociology of violence on the one hand and methodological approaches that transcend both micro- and macro-reductionist accounts on the other hand—the paper addresses a significant lack of sociological research. That is, the proposed research perspective aims at overcoming one of the most conspicuous shortcomings in social scientific appraisals of violence in general and political violence in particular: the tendency to analyze violent interaction as a primarily moral or political phenomenon, instead of analyzing it within a specific context of action as a social fact. Treating violence as a social fact not only means insisting on the reciprocal relations between individual behavior and group-making social processes, but also means systematically elaborating on the argument that the impact of these relations upon social actors and their behavior is achieved through collective representations of one’s own position or place in society.