The Duck of Minerva

A gulf in understanding?

Various and Sundry

by Ben O'Loughlin

4 October 2010, 1149 EDT

Last week I participated in a workshop at the Al Jazeera Center for Studies in Doha, Qatar, which brought to an end the ESRC’s Radicalisation & Violence programme of research projects, led by Prof. Stuart Croft. I was one of several researchers invited to present recent research on ‘terrorism, resistance and radicalisation’. My fledgling experience of academia has thus far been that debates rarely get politicised. It is noteworthy when it happens, triggering a visceral thrill or horror as we depart from our scripts of professional civility. The Radicalisation & Violence programme has been politicised from the outset. Anthropologists and sociologists were unhappy that researchers might apply to carry out fieldwork in dangerous regions, that the FCO was offering some funding towards the programme and hence it was ‘state-sponsored’ to an extent (although so is the ESRC), and nobody carrying out research could be unaware that in the UK in the 2000s people at universities were being arrested for having ‘radical’ material on their computers, even if they were carrying out legitimate research. It is no surprise, then, that the concluding event retained this political edge. Talking about terrorism in this particular region could not be otherwise.

The event was a success, but I came away with two reservations. The first concerns the possible failure of Anglophone security studies to find ways to engage with the rest of the world in ways that don’t come across as dominating. Croft has written about this himself recently (chapter in here), noting that ‘interdependence’ is a concept we in elite universities in North America, Europe or S.E. Asia might be comfortable with, but might seem threatening to others. Our research might contribute to the very problems of international conflict and cooperation it seeks only to explain. Sure enough, in Doha the Arabic professors consistently argued that the migration of Western terms like ‘terrorism’ and ‘radicalisation’ is itself aggressive, a continuation of colonial practices. ‘They begin in English dictionaries but are applied in Arabic countries’, said one participant. And the fact that ‘we’ don’t provide clear definitions is an act of power: ‘The vagueness is deliberate. They [Western academics] want to hold in their hands what is legitimate’, said another. Western academics will define terrorism to suit our states’ interests. From this perspective, perhaps, for us ESRC-funded researchers to go to Doha and use such terms was an affront.
We can easily contest these claims. How can ‘they’ so lazily conflate Western researchers with their national governments? How can anyone expect a consensual definition of terms that are political and essentially contested? But at the same time, do we have a duty to discuss politics and security in other discourses? How can all parties translate and recognise each other’s vocabularies, histories, and problem framings? Without some thought about this, a space is created for pointless misunderstanding and mutual aggravation.
And it’s in this space, marked by the lack of shared terms and meanings, that my second concern emerges. Misconceptions about ‘the West’ were used so routinely, by individuals who could be considered opinion leaders in Arabic media, individuals who are familiar enough with life in North America or Europe to know that these are misconceptions, but who continue to perpetuate them in a manner that reifies the notion of a war between Islam and the West. As mild instances, the notions that ‘Westerners burn Qurans’ and ‘the West is Islamophobic’ were raised several times. A colleague pointed out, if you try to burn a Quran in the UK you will quickly be arrested, and if a person or institution discriminates on religious or ethnic grounds then legal proceeding should kick in. This is not to say Islamophobia doesn’t exist, but that it can be challenged and is challenged. Everyday multiculturalism has survived the war on terror. And does it make sense to even talk of ‘the West’ now anyway? Well, from those outside it, who feel on the receiving end of ‘Western’ action, it seems so. But there is a danger of explaining the world through Orientalism and finding the world is Orientalist.
These reservations aside, such events are a useful platform for overcoming mutual blind spots and only highlight the need for more engagement. 

Ben O'Loughlin is Professor of International Relations at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is Director of the New Political Communication Unit, which was launched in 2007. Before joining Royal Holloway in September 2006 he was a researcher on the ESRC New Security Challenges Programme.

2 Comments

  1. Ben
    Ben on 4 October 2010 at 14.16 EDT

    “there is a danger of explaining the world through Orientalism and finding the world is Orientalist.” – Brilliant.

  2. JpR
    JpR on 13 October 2010 at 20.59 EDT

    Thanks for this interesting post. The two reservations you highlight are very understandable, and I am sympathetic to them. Yet, I also worry about them being reservations. Could they not be considered findings?

    Events of the same type–say, research presentations–can have different ends and outcomes depending on the audience. It might be to sharpen up concepts, or talk about field methods, or discuss the sociology of the discipline. It is plausible that the point of raising 'colonialism' and 'the West' in that context was to push for greater clarity and precision concerning the entire endeavor (indeed, I'm not that surprised it happened–which it seems you sort of hint at as well). I'm not sure I disagree with that goal, uncomfortable as it may have been, 'pointless' or 'aggravating' as it may have seemed to you.

    I whole-heartedly agree that security studies should be more reflexive about its language and practice, but I think the Croft 'interdependence' example that you gave is evidence of how the notion of 'engaging others' in a safe, non-dominating/threatening way seems like a very difficult task, if not impossible. It is tough for me to buy the notion that there is a perfect translation of vocabularies, histories, and so on because what matters in terms of meaning-making–the perspective–is, in some sense, untranslatable. That does not mean there is no communication (there's always that) or management of interpretation, and so on. I would argue that these interactions can be thought of as less about 'seeing' blind spots and coming to 'mutual' understanding (both sides, in a way, have a sense of the other–you say as much), than about being aware of the multiple perspectives concerning politics, and then thinking about what do each of these then tell us about why politics is understood one way versus another. What kind of politics do these different perspectives make possible? They may explain why particular actions are understood as sensible and legitimate in one view, but not in another (such as questioning the utility of the very concepts being studied).

    Put another way, maybe we, for the moment, set aside the question of whether or not “the West really is Islamophobic” and consider why is it that particular people still think this when we think it strange.