Andrew Whiting

This book offers the first sustained investigation into non-elite understandings of radicalisation and counter-radicalisation policy. Drawing on original focus group research with students from universities across England and Wales, the book explores how ‘ordinary’ citizens understand radicalisation, how they make sense of counter-radicalisation initiatives like the UK Prevent Strategy, and how they evaluate its functioning and effects across society. Radicalisation, counter-radicalisation and Prevent demonstrates that these non-elite insights often contradict and diverge from traditional (elite) security knowledge and thus shed new light on wider questions around the politics of security. This has vitally important implications not only for counter-radicalisation and counter-terrorism policy but for the very study and practice of security.

This book offers the first sustained investigation into non-elite understandings of radicalisation and counter-radicalisation policy. Drawing on original focus group research with students from universities across England and Wales, the book explores how ‘ordinary’ citizens understand radicalisation, how they make sense of counter-radicalisation initiatives like the UK Prevent Strategy, and how they evaluate its functioning and effects across society. Radicalisation, counter-radicalisation and Prevent demonstrates that these non-elite insights often contradict and diverge from traditional (elite) security knowledge and thus shed new light on wider questions around the politics of security. This has vitally important implications not only for counter-radicalisation and counter-terrorism policy but for the very study and practice of security.

Constructing cybersecurity adopts a constructivist approach to cybersecurity and problematises the state of contemporary knowledge within this field. Setting out by providing a concise overview of such knowledge this book subsequently adopts Foucauldian positions on power and security to highlight assumptions and limitations found herein. What follows is a detailed analysis of the discourse produced by various internet security companies demonstrating the important role that these security professionals play constituting and entrenching this knowledge by virtue of their specific epistemic authority. As a relatively new source within a broader security dispositif these security professionals have created relationships of mutual recognition and benefit with traditional political and security professionals.

This book charts contemporary developments in counter-extremism within the UK education sector. Set against the background of the controversial Prevent strategy the book focuses on the expansion of counter-extremism into education and draws on key legislation such as the Counter Terrorism and Security Act (2015) that imposed a statutory counter-extremism duty on public sector workers in the UK. The authors provide a wide-ranging critique that draws on theories of surveillance and power, an international review of counter-extremism educational initiatives and a series of interviews with UK lecturers. Terrorism in the Classroom highlights the problems that occur when counter-extremism becomes an objective of education and a part of the curriculum, as well as the anxiety that is felt by educators who have been deputised into the role of counter-extremism practitioners. It will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including Criminology, International Relations, Politics and Education.