systemic perspectives

the moral ecology of extremism

the question of what drives extremism has generated a wealth of observations, relating to the characteristics of people who adopt extremist beliefs and engage in extremist behaviour, and to the features of situations that encourage the adoption of such beliefs and the engagement in such behaviour. concerns about the harmful potential of new technologies have fuelled a renewed interest in the environmental drivers of extremism. exposure to violence-supportive narratives, discrimination, migration, disinformation, cultural norms, the mobilisation of social identities by social movements – these are only some of the exogenous contributors hypothesised to play a part. this multiplication of drivers begs the question of knowledge integration. how do they fit together? are all individuals equally exposed and permeable to their effects or are some of us more 'at risk' than others? on what basis should we assess whether social, political, technological, economic or cultural change might suppress or support extremism? this paper does not enumerate all possible contributors to extremism. rather, it addresses some conceptual challenges in this problem space; namely, a lack of clarity as to problem definition, and the limited integration of individual and exogenous accounts of extremism. inasmuch as these questions remain unresolved, they contribute to the persistence of the problem in and of themselves.

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