ABSTRACT
The pivotal role of emotional ties and the collective bonds of identity among friends (i.e. young Muslim men in Sageman, 2004) and sexual intimates (in the case of women, e.g. Morgan, 1989; Dworkin, 2000) have featured in the research literature on radicalization and have further developed through the lens of political prisoner life writing in the previous chapter. What emerged from the micro-analysis of these life stories was the prominence of sex, sexuality, the body and gender difference in radical subcultures, and their attendant auto/biographical representative forms, as well as in the broader cultural narratives in general about the nature of the terrorist threat, and how these enable us to trace the ways into – and reasons for wanting to get out of – such radical groups. A key factor in the analysis of the life stories written by and about radical women was – in contrast to the mysterious and enigmatic figure of the female terrorist – the all too familiar image of the woman trapped in an institutional hierarchy of exploitative and often violent relationships in which her desire to actively contribute to socio-political change is readily sublimated to the needs of male-dominated subgroups and thus neutralized, ultimately becoming the object of commodity exchange in capitalist popular culture (in the form of films, novels, television drama, etc. in which the narrative denouement is more often than not the violent killing of these women). Telling stories about sex and sexuality is a crucial part of the auto/biographical representations of what life in a radical group is like for both women and men, and why they were attracted to join these groups and make these sorts of life choices in the first place, and subsequently to devise their modes of action in order to achieve their political aims. But, even in an age obsessed with sex and the production and consumption of sexual stories (Weeks, [1986] 2003; Plummer, 1995), is sex really that important as a variable in the radicalization process, or do these auto/biographies – as perhaps unwittingly implies in Jane Alpert’s (1981) introductory remarks – simply focus on this area of radical subcultures
as a way of deflecting individual culpability for their violent actions or simply making their stories more entertaining and enticing for the reading public, enabling them to raise their public profiles and sell more books? One way to address this question is to examine another key element closely
related to the influence of intimacy via gender, sexuality and the body on radicalization and radical subcultures: the role of children, childhood and family relationships in the radicalization narratives of political actors in their prison life writings. Each is closely related to the study of intimacy and the private sphere, and as such it is justified to investigate whether or not they both feature as elemental influences on radicalization in these life writings. If they do, does this influence manifest itself in different or similar ways? The political relevance of children, childhood and family relationships have until recently remained severely underestimated, or at least woefully under-researched, not least due to substantial difficulties arising from concerns over access and research ethics, in addition to the general theoretical and methodological estrangement of terrorism and security studies from these areas classically identified with the private sphere linked to femininity (which, as noted previously, tend to lie outside the parameters of the rationalized nation state). However, this does not mean that the family and the private sphere have not featured as the object of concern about national security. It has been argued that, for example, the intergenerational transmission of political militancy via the family (typically through the dynastic practices of intermarriage between members of Irish Republican families) was key to the development of radicalization and the entrenchment nationalist mythologies and subcultures among Republicans in the interwar years (White, 1993). While such dynastic practices relating to the transmission of radicalization subcultures and attendant values through marriage are still in evidence among terrorist groups to this day (e.g. Jamaah Islamiyah (Ismail, 2008)), even where radicalization in Northern Ireland diverges from this practice after the Second World War, the influence of the family is still in evidence. The more specific emotional qualities of obligation and identity bonds that shape filial relationships mainly between young men have been noted in the recent research literature, and highlight the role of affective experience modelled on the sibling relationships of ‘brotherhood’ (and, where appropriate, ‘sisterhood’), as well as the metaphorical representation in nationalist cultural discourses of the state in the form of ‘mother’ or ‘fatherland’ (Valente, 1994). Notwithstanding their concentration on interpersonal violence carried out
by men upon women and children in the private sphere, as noted in the previous chapter, feminists have for some considerable time been cognizant of the political ramifications of violence which are fundamentally linked to the political hierarchy and power regimes of the domestic space. The contemporary rhetoric of political violence among ‘jihadists’ to pursue a campaign of violence ‘at home’ is in itself highly suggestive, reiterating the signal importance of the domestic geopolitical space as the preferred arena for the
power struggle, not least as evidenced by the available data on the ‘top-down’ recruitment strategies of Islamist groups in constructing ‘shadowy’ networks (Bush, 2002) founded on a core base of family members (Ismail, 2008). While ‘the family’ is a consistently prominent feature of any politically
conservative agenda, at the same time families are foundational to what Marty and Appleby (1993: 3) term the ‘defiant society’. Ironically, both conservative and revolutionary interpretations of the family share identical roots in the common conviction, prominent in the twentieth century, ‘ … that control of the moral and spiritual formation of children and young adults is the certain path to the eventual transformation of society as a whole, including the state’ (ibid.: 3). Nevertheless, the general tendency is to overlook or derogate the family to at best a kind of secondary status in the study of discrete social phenomena presented as ‘social facts’ and (largely) subjected to empirical analysis has been a feature of social scientific research virtually since its inception:
No doubt one of the reasons why little of the exegetical and critical literature concerns itself with [Durkheim’s] conception of the relations between the sexes is a consequence of the fact that these three basic subjects, ‘men’, ‘women’ and ‘children’, are not constituted as objects in their own right but appear as one of a series of primary divisions against which are projected the more obviously constructed foreground topics. It is ‘law’, ‘suicide’, ‘religion’ etc., which organize commentaries in relation to problems of moral integration and social density. It may be seen that the general avoidance of his ideas on this subjectso complete incidentally that neither of two recent presentations, Giddens (1978) and Thompson (1982) pays any attention to them at all …
(Gane, 1993: 24)
Gane levels the same charges of neglect of the family and childhood in the study of sexuality and conjugal relationships as key factors shaping the social and material formation of moral integration, social density and culturally specific forms of anomie (citing Tiryakian’s analysis of late modern culture, ‘sexual anomie’ is seen as being especially pertinent as a key motivating factor determining all three (Gane, 1993: 24-5)).1 There are a number of important points being made here. First, it is important to reiterate that families, children and childhood are closely proximate, but yet utterly distinct in conceptual terms, making the analysis of radicalization viewed through this prism less than a simple matter. Second, and of equal import, is the issue of social integration, a concept that Durkheim considered especially important as a way of gauging the normality or pathology of the state of social cohesion and/or functionality. Indeed, we observe that the European Parliament has been inter alia drawn to the issue of integration with respect to the radicalization of foreign nationals in
member states: ‘In the majority of cases, third-country nationals have integrated well within the Member States of the EU. However, if integration fails it can provide fertile ground for violent radicalization to develop’ (Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council, 2005: section 2.4). While it is unclear if such references to ‘third-country nationals’ refers to them as individuals, groups, or both, the EU focus on interfaith and cultural dialogue in the integration of new immigrants/immigrant populations strongly suggests that the family and family practices are under scrutiny.2
