 |
 |
Dear all, a CFP that may be of your interest for a panel at EISA 2018: *Radicalization and counter-terrorism in Africa. Governance in ‘ungoverned spaces’ between absentee, clientelist and abusive state practice.* EISA 2018, 12th Pan-European Conference on International Relations, Prague. September 12-15, 2018 _Panel proposal for Section 14_: Everyday Practices of ‘Counter-Radicalisation’ and ‘Countering Violent Extremism’: Governing the Radical through Power, Knowledge, Economy and Routine Proponents:Francesco Strazzari, Associate Professor of International Relations, Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa (Italy);Luca Raineri, Research Fellow, Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa (Italy) The rise of jihadist variants of Islamism in Africa has prompted international actors to sponsor ambitious programmes to fight radicalization and violent extremism. These are usually premised on the assumption that a lack of governance and limited state reach stimulates radicalization, especially in marginal areas and in poorly governed borderlands, and therefore strive to enhance the capacities of African states to govern their peripheries. Recent studies (ISS 2016, ICG 2017, Pellerin 2017, UNDP 2017) emphasize instead that the perception of abuses perpetrated by state authorities are the key drivers of radicalization in Africa. This perspective suggests that it is therefore state action – and not the lack thereof – that contributes to explaining the development of violent extremism in Africa. Investigating the tension between excessive/authoritarian vs incomplete/weak state control in African peripheries and borderlands, the panel aims to discuss the complex interplay between the processes of radicalization / rebel governance and the practices of counter-terrorism / state governance, in order to dissect the specificities of these phenomena in different African contexts (Dowd and Raleigh 2013), and the ambiguous status of patronage politics within it. The focus on practices allows to circumvent the impasse of definitory issues that the well-known lack of conceptual clarity of radicalization involves (Kudnani 2012, Coolsaet 2016). At the same time, the panel invites a reflection on the methods for the scholarly study of radicalization, counter-radicalization, and related phenomena. Bureaucratic and security constraints limit the access to and quality of available data, even more so in remote African borderlands, thereby prompting a critical examination of the existing evidence and of its mobilization to support experts’ truth-claims, and policy-makers’ success-claims. Abstract proposals of maximum 250 words must be sent to Luca Raineri ([log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>), *_no later than Sunday 28^th January_*. The name and affiliation of the proponent shall also be included. Alice -- PhD Candidate in International Relations Co-Convenor of Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group (CTS) <https://www.bisa.ac.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=93-cst> Latest Publication: - and Raineri, L. 2017, /"ISIS and Al-Qaeda as strategies and political imaginaries in Africa: a comparison between Boko Haram and Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb" / <http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/z7JhDYqN83Qq8pYIBxRH/full%20>, /Civil Wars /, 19: 4 Last op-ed: It's not all about violence: the Islamic State and Nutella <https://securitypraxis.eu/not-violence-islamic-state-nutella>