DOCSLIB.ORG

Research on the ISIS Frontline and with Al Qaeda Affiliates

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Research on the ISIS Frontline and with Al Qaeda Affiliates Asian Studies Centre, St Antony’s College; Crisis, Extremes and Apocalypse Research Network, The Oxford Research Centre for Humanities Devoted Actors and the Will to Kill and Die: Research on the ISIS frontline and with Al Qaeda Affiliates Scott Atran Research Director, CNRS Paris; Research Professor, University of Michigan; Founding Fellow, Centre for the Resolution of Intractable Conflict, University of Oxford Respondent: Faisal Devji (St Antony’s) 5 p.m., Friday January 27th Pavilion Room, St Antony’s College Uncompromising wars, revolution, rights movements, and today’s global terrorism are in part driven by Devoted Actors who adhere to sacred or transcendent values that generate actions independently, or all out of proportion, from rationally expected outcomes, calculated costs and consequences, or likely risks and rewards. Field-based observation, surveys and experimental studies in real-world political conflicts show ways in which Devoted Actors, who are unconditionally committed to sacred causes, and whose personal identities are fused within a unique collective identity, willingly make costly sacrifices including fighting and dying, thus enabling low-power groups to endure and often prevail against materially much stronger foes. Explaining how devoted actors come to sacrifice for cause and comrade not only is a scientific goal, but also a practical imperative to prevent and resolve seemingly intractable intergroup disputes that can spiral out of control in a rapidly interconnecting world of collapsing and conflicting cultural traditions in search of salvation. Fieldwork and experiments in Europe, North Africa and on the frontlines in the battle with the Islamic State in Iraq help to make the case. Scott Atran holds a BA and PhD in Anthropology from Columbia University and a MA in Social Relations from Johns Hopkins. He is currently Senior Research Fellow, Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford; Co-Founder, Centre for the Resolution of Intractable Conflict, Oxford. Research Director in Anthropology, National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), Institut Jean Nicod-Ecole Normale Supérieure and Research Professor of Psychology and Public Policy, Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He has experimented on ways scientists and ordinary people categorise and reason about nature, on the cognitive and evolutionary psychology of religion, and on the limits of rational choice in political and cultural conflict. He has done experimental studies in the field with frontline combatants, terrorists and political leaders and has been engaged in conflict negotiations in the Middle East, and in the establishment of indigenously managed forest reserves for Native American peoples. Professor Atran advises the UN Security Council Committee on Combating Terrorism and the Secretary General's Advisory Board on implementation of Resolution 2250 (Youth, Violence, and Peace). He is a contributor to numerous scientific and popular publications, and his books include: Cognitive Foundations of Natural History: Towards an Anthropology of Science; In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion; The Native Mind and the Cultural Construction of Nature; Talking to the Enemy: Violent extremism, Sacred Values, and What it Means to be Human; L'Etat islamique est une révolution. All are welcome Enquiries: [email protected] or 01865-274559 Co-organised by Faisal Devji for the Asian Studies Centre and Audrey Borowski for the Crisis, Extremes and Apocalypse research network. Picture: Ideological graffiti on walls in Fallujah, 5 July 2016, Mahmood Hosseini, Tasnim New Agency, Creative Commons. .
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Reframing Sacred Values
    In Theory Reframing Sacred Values Scott Atran and Robert Axelrod Sacred values differ from material or instrumental values in that they incorporate moral beliefs that drive action in ways dissociated from prospects for success. Across the world, people believe that devotion to essential or core values — such as the welfare of their family and country, or their commitment to religion, honor, and justice — are, or ought to be, absolute and inviolable. Counterintuitively, understanding an opponent’s sacred values, we believe, offers surprising opportunities for breakthroughs to peace. Because of the emotional unwillingness of those in conflict situations to negotiate sacred values, conventional wisdom suggests that nego- tiators should either leave sacred values for last in political negotia- tions or should try to bypass them with sufficient material incentives. Our empirical findings and historical analysis suggest that conven- tional wisdom is wrong.In fact, offering to provide material benefits in exchange for giving up a sacred value actually makes settlement more difficult because people see the offering as an insult rather than a compromise. But we also found that making symbolic concessions of no apparent material benefit might open the way to resolving seem- ingly irresolvable conflicts. Scott Atran is research director in anthropology at CNRS — Institut Jean Nicod in Paris, a presidential scholar in sociology at the John Jay College of the City University of New York, and a visiting professor of psychology and public policy at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. His e-mail address is [email protected]. Robert Axelrod is Walgreen Professor for the Study of Human Understanding in the department of political science and in the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan.
    [Show full text]
  • Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason and Survival the Conversation Continues
    Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason and Survival The Conversation Continues Criticism of Beyond Belief by RP Bird It deeply annoys me when the Big Guns of science spout off about protecting science. Like the rest of us have our thumbs up our asses? I'm one of the thousands of Kansans who wrote to the state board of education complaining about the pseudo-science of Intelligent Design. I'm always short of money, but I gave a little to SEA when they started up operations. I've written letters to my state representatives and my congressmen on the subject of science and keeping religious ideas out of science education. So imagine my dismay when I read the NY Times account of the La Jolla meeting. Remember just before the Iraq war, when Middle Eastern experts warned Bush and the rest of us that invading Iraq would be confirmation of the worst fantasies of the jihadist movement? Congratulations, you've just done for science what Bush did for the USA in the Middle East. I can already hear the Christian Right: "We told you, they're out to get us!" Not only that, but you and others want to hurt the cause of science by adopting the methods of the Right? Are you nuts? If you adopt the methods of a religion, you make science into a religion. Also, what's with this "loyalty oath" everyone at the conference had to spout before being heard? No one will listen to them unless they declare the aren't religious? Isn't that what the Christian Right does? You of all people should know that the best defense of science is to do science and teach what you have learned.
    [Show full text]
  • Folk Biology and the Anthropology of Science Page 1 of 41
    Folk biology and the anthropology of science Page 1 of 41 Folk Biology and the Anthropology of Science: Cognitive Universals and Cultural Particulars Scott Atran Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CREA - Ecole Polytechnique) 1 rue Descartes 75005 Paris FRANCE and Institute for Social Research The University of Michigan Ann Arbor MI48106-1248 USA [email protected] Keywords Folk biology, taxonomy, cognitive universals, modularity, evolution, culture, Maya, anthropology Abstract This essay in the "anthropology of science" is about how cognition constrains culture in producing science. The example is folk biology, whose cultural recurrence issues from the very same domain- specific cognitive universals that provide the historical backbone of systematic biology. Humans everywhere think about plants and animals in highly structured ways. People have similar folk- biological taxonomies composed of essence-based species-like groups and the ranking of species into lower- and higher-order groups. Such taxonomies are not as arbitrary in structure and content, nor as variable across cultures, as the assembly of entities into cosmologies, materials or social groups. These structures are routine products of our "habits of mind," which may be in part naturally selected to grasp relevant and recurrent "habits of the world." An experiment illustrates that the same taxonomic rank is preferred for making biological inferences in two diverse populations: Lowland Maya and Midwest Americans. These findings cannot be explained by domain-general models of similarity because such models cannot account for why both cultures prefer species-like groups, despite the fact that Americans have relatively little actual knowledge or experience at this level. This supports a modular view of folk biology as a core domain of human knowledge and as a special player, or "core meme," in the selection processes by which cultures evolve.
    [Show full text]
  • Counting Casualties: a Framework for Respectful, Useful Records
    J Risk Uncertainty DOI 10.1007/s11166-006-9001-6 Counting casualties: A framework for respectful, useful records Baruch Fischhoff · Scott Atran · Noam Fischhoff C Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2007 Abstract Counting casualties in conflict zones faces both practical and ethical concerns. Drawing on procedures from risk analysis, we propose a general approach. It represents each death by standard features, having either essential value, for capturing the social and cultural meaning of individual casualties, or instrumental value, for relating patterns of casualties to possible causes and effects. We illustrate the approach with the choices involved in attempts to record casualties in Iraq and the Israel-Palestine conflict, and with natural disasters, as exemplified by Hurricane Katrina. We advocate institutionalizing the approach, so that recording casualties increases understanding, rather than suspicion. Keywords Risk analysis . Risk characterization . Casualties . Conflict . Forensics JEL Classification D74 . D78 . D81 . F51 . H56 . I18 . N40 . Q54 Counting casualties is part of any conflict. The parties must do it both to monitor the conflict’s progress and to give it meaning (Department of Defense, 2005; Graham, 2005; Holt, 2006). Without accurate counts, the situation is obscured and the fallen are dishonored. If these failures appear deliberate, then they may aggravate the conflict, by adding insult to injury. Political scientists need these counts for their own reasons: creating narrative accounts, providing policy advice, and testing theories of conflict and reconciliation (e.g., Daponte, 2003; Epstein, 2002; Peterson, 2002; Walzer, 1992). The work is grim and challenging. The recorders face not only the risks of work in a conflict zone, but also the wrath of those who want the story told a particular way or not told at all.
    [Show full text]
  • The Trouble with Memes: Inference Versus Imitation in Cultural Creation Scott Atran
    The Trouble with Memes: Inference versus Imitation in Cultural Creation Scott Atran To cite this version: Scott Atran. The Trouble with Memes: Inference versus Imitation in Cultural Creation. Human Nature, Springer Verlag, 2001, 12 (4), pp.351-381. ijn_00000123 HAL Id: ijn_00000123 https://jeannicod.ccsd.cnrs.fr/ijn_00000123 Submitted on 3 Sep 2002 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. 1 Appeared in: Human Nature 12(4):351-381, 2001 THE TROUBLE WITH MEMES : INFERENCE VERSUS IMITATION IN CULTURAL CREATION Scott Atran CNRS – Institut Jean Nicod, Paris and The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Address for correspondence: CNRS, 9 rampe de l‟observatoire, 66660 Port Vendres, France Email: [email protected] 2 ABSTRACT (Word Count: 100) Memes are hypothetical cultural units passed on by imitation; although non-biological, they undergo Darwinian selection like genes. Cognitive study of multimodular human minds undermines memetics: unlike genetic replication, high fidelity transmission of cultural information is the exception, not the rule. Constant, rapid “mutation” of information during communication generates endlessly varied creations that nevertheless adhere to modular input conditions. The sort of cultural information most susceptible to modular processing is that most readily acquired by children, most easily transmitted across individuals, most apt to survive within a culture, most likely to recur in different cultures, and most disposed to cultural variation and elaboration.
    [Show full text]
  • Suicide Terrorism As Strategy: Case Studies of Hamas and the Kurdistan Workers Party
    Suicide Terrorism as Strategy: Case Studies of Hamas and the Kurdistan Workers Party Strategic Insights, Volume IV, Issue 7 (July 2005) by Ali Wyne Strategic Insights is a monthly electronic journal produced by the Center for Contemporary Conflict at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. The views expressed here are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of NPS, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government. For a PDF version of this article, click here. Introduction Why is it that certain terrorist organizations employ suicide terrorism to advance their objectives, while others do not? In order to answer this question, I will examine why Hamas, the central terrorist organization operating within the Occupied Territories, has gradually escalated its employment of suicide terrorism; and why the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a separatist group operating in Turkey, gradually abandoned it as a component of its broader strategy. I will discuss the activities of these groups within the context of two competing explanations of suicide terrorism: those which focus on religious motivations, and those which focus on strategic motivations. I argue that while the first set of explanations is meritorious in some instances, the latter set of explanations is much more broadly applicable, and, as such, more legitimate. Suicide Terrorism as Strategy Hamas’ official charter, made public on August 18, 1988, articulates a harrowing commitment to the complete destruction of Israel: “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”[1] The charter’s most striking features lie not in its body, but, rather, in its opening and closing statements.
    [Show full text]
  • Mishandling Suicide Terrorism
    Scott Atran Mishandling Suicide Terrorism The past three years saw more suicide attacks than the last quar- ter century. Most of them were religiously motivated. Repeated suicide ac- tions show that massive counterforce alone does not diminish the frequency or intensity of suicide attack. Like pounding mercury with a hammer, this sort of top-heavy counterstrategy only seems to generate more varied and insidious forms of suicide terrorism. Even with many top Al Qaeda leaders now dead or in custody, the transnational jihadist fraternity is transforming into a hydra-headed network more difficult to fight than before. Poverty and lack of education per se are not root causes of suicide terror- ism. Nor do Muslims who have expressed support for martyr actions and trust in Osama bin Laden or the late Hamas leader Sheikh Yassin as a rule hate democratic freedoms or Western culture, although many of these Mus- lims do despise U.S. foreign policy, especially in the Middle East. Rising aspi- rations followed by dwindling expectations, particularly regarding civil liberties, are critical factors in generating support for suicide terrorism. The United States, Israel, Russia, and other nations on the frontline in the war on terrorism need to realize that military and counterinsurgency ac- tions are tactical, not strategic, responses to suicide terrorism—the most po- litically destabilizing and psychologically devastating form of terrorism. When these nations back oppressive and unpopular governments (even those deemed “partners in the war on terror”), this only generates popular resentment and support for terrorism against those governments as well as their backers. To attract potential recruits away from jihadist martyrdom— suicide terrorism’s most virulent strain—and to dry up its popular support Scott Atran is a director of research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris and an adjunct professor of psychology, anthropology, and natural resources at the University of Michigan.
    [Show full text]
  • Can Fictional Superhuman Agents Have Mental States?
    METHOD Method and Theory in the Study & THEORY in the STUDY OF of Religion 30 (�0�8) 4�5-448 RELIGION brill.com/mtsr Can Fictional Superhuman Agents have Mental States? Gabriel Levy Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies Norwegian University of Science and Technology NO-7491 Trondheim, Norway [email protected] Abstract According to Deborah Tollefsen, from the analytic perspective called “interpretivism”, there is a reasonable way in which groups can be said to have mental states. She bases her argument on the every-day use of language, where people speak as if groups have states such as intentions, desires and wishes. Such propositional attitudes form the basis of any account of truth-conditional semantics, the rules by which people grasp the conditions under which an utterance is true. If groups (abstract units of people) have mental states, perhaps superhuman agents have them too. One argument that may contradict this premise is one that says that, whereas groups exist, superhuman agents do not. However, if groups exist on the basis of normative narratives about them and the institutionalized actions they carry out in the world, the same can be said for superhuman agents. They are like legal fictions: fictional but real. Superhuman agents are fictional and real in a similar sense as groups.1 Keywords religion – semantics – Davidson – fiction – truth – falsity 1 Thanks to Miriam Kyselo, Lionel Sacks, Ulrika Mårtensson, Rene van Woudenberg, the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at NTNU, John McGraw, Jeppe Sinding Jensen, Terry Godlove, Scott Davis, Lars Albinus, Nancy Frankenberry, and especially Mark Gardiner.
    [Show full text]
  • Why Explaining Religion Is Not Sufficient to Explain Away Religion
    Why Explaining Religion Is Not Sufficient to Explain Away Religion An argumentative exploration of the leading evolutionary explanatory accounts of religion to demonstrate the inability of science to explain away religious belief Author: Vipusaayini Sivanesanathan Edited by: Ko-Lun Liu 1. Introduction While science continues to make significant progressive strides, religion has yet to add to its historically established doctrines. Not only has the rapid expansion of science brought into question the validity and necessity of religion, part of scientific inquiry now focuses on how ‘counterintuitive’ notions of religion came to be. ‘Counterintuitive’ ideas of religion posit religious beliefs to go against or violate empirically verified facts or knowledge. Some argue that we can utilize the knowledge attained from advancements in science to explain away religion. One particular aspect of science that is used to explain away religion are evolutionary theories. In this paper, I will argue that while evolutionary accounts can explain our affinity towards religion, it has yet to explain away religion. I will explicate and refute the three different argument for evolutionary accounts of religion, including the socio-evolutionary, bio-evolutionary and cultural-evolutionary, to demonstrate how science has not succeeded in explaining away religion. 2. Why Does Science Try to Explain Away Religion? There is a prominent assumption in academia that science and religion are two separate and distinct fields which fundamentally do not, and (for some) cannot overlap. Both science and theism attempt to answer the central questions concerning the design and function of natural phenomena (i.e., evolution, questions of the universe, life etc).
    [Show full text]
  • A Commentary on Emmanuel Macron's Declaration of the Need
    New England Journal of Public Policy Volume 31 Article 8 Issue 1 Special Issue: CRIC 5-1-2019 The rC isis of Cultures and the Vitality of Values: A Commentary on Emmanuel Macron’s Declaration of the Need for Religion Scott Atran Institut Jean Nicod, Ecole Normale Supérieure; Centre for the Resolution of Intractable Conflict (Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford); Gerald Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan; Artis International Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umb.edu/nejpp Part of the Peace and Conflict Studies Commons, Public Policy Commons, and the Religion Commons Recommended Citation Atran, Scott (2019) "The rC isis of Cultures and the Vitality of Values: A Commentary on Emmanuel Macron’s Declaration of the Need for Religion," New England Journal of Public Policy: Vol. 31 : Iss. 1 , Article 8. Available at: https://scholarworks.umb.edu/nejpp/vol31/iss1/8 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks at UMass Boston. It has been accepted for inclusion in New England Journal of Public Policy by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks at UMass Boston. For more information, please contact [email protected]. New England Journal of Public Policy The Crisis of Cultures and the Vitality of Values: A Commentary on Emmanuel Macron’s Declaration of the Need for Religion Scott Atran Institut Jean Nicod, Ecole Normale Supérieure Centre for the Resolution of Intractable Conflict (Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford) Gerald Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan Artis International French president Emmanuel Macron’s claim that society needs religion is explored in the light of rising populism and illiberalism, and failures allied to the forced gamble of globalization.
    [Show full text]
  • Interview with Scott Atran, the TIMES (London)
    THE TIMES (LONDON) • Scott Atran, who says that religious terrorism came ‘out of nowhere’ in the 1970s Richard Pohle for The Times David Aaronovitch November 13 2010 12:01AM Scott Atran has spent a lot of time in the past few years talking to terrorists and would-be suicide attackers, or to the people who love and support them. Now he’s in the Waldorf Hilton in Covent Garden talking to me. It’s his book tour, so I get to be the anthropologist, asking him questions and observing his behaviour. Talking to the Enemy, subtitled Violent Extremism, Sacred Values and What it Means to be Human, is an important book, by turns fascinating, dense, scientific, debatable, illuminating and irritating. Parts really have to be read by anyone seeking to understand modern jihadism, other sections reflect Atran’s wide knowledge of anthropology, but great dollops of evolutionary psychology ‘ conjectural at best and certainly untestable for the moment ‘ send the readers on unreliable journeys. Atran is a wonderful guy to spend a morning with. Now in his late fifties but mistakable for 45, he started in the anthropology business in 1969, when he embarked on what can best be described as a gap decade. Atran had won the Westinghouse scholarship for advanced mathematics at Columbia University in New York. It was a time of student protest, and one of these brought about an encounter with the legendary anthropologist Margaret Mead. The two of them had an argument about tactics, which somehow led to the teenager being invited up to her tower office in the Museum of Natural History in New York, which was ‘the tower of Ali Baba’, Atran says, ‘With thousands of skulls.
    [Show full text]
  • Religion's Evolutionary Landscape
    BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (2004) 27, 713–770 Printed in the United States of America Religion’s evolutionary landscape: Counterintuition, commitment, compassion, communion Scott Atran CNRS–Institut Jean Nicod, 75007 Paris, France; and Institute for Social Research–University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1248 [email protected] http://www.institutnicod.org Ara Norenzayan Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z4 Canada [email protected] www.psych.ubc.ca/~ara Abstract: Religion is not an evolutionary adaptation per se, but a recurring cultural by-product of the complex evolutionary landscape that sets cognitive, emotional, and material conditions for ordinary human interactions. Religion exploits only ordinary cognitive processes to passionately display costly devotion to counterintuitive worlds governed by supernatural agents. The conceptual founda- tions of religion are intuitively given by task-specific panhuman cognitive domains, including folkmechanics, folkbiology, and folkpsy- chology. Core religious beliefs minimally violate ordinary notions about how the world is, with all of its inescapable problems, thus en- abling people to imagine minimally impossible supernatural worlds that solve existential problems, including death and deception. Here the focus is on folkpsychology and agency. A key feature of the supernatural agent concepts common to all religions is the triggering of an “Innate Releasing Mechanism,” or “agency detector,” whose proper (naturally selected) domain encompasses animate objects rele- vant to hominid survival – such as predators, protectors, and prey – but which actually extends to moving dots on computer screens, voices in wind, and faces on clouds. Folkpsychology also crucially involves metarepresentation, which makes deception possible and threatens any social order.
    [Show full text]