Resentment as the affective foundations of radicalization

Basic data for this project

Description

The research project is concerned with the cultural soil that can nurture Islamic radicalization, and with the role that the formation of cultural affects of inferiority and resentment among Muslims plays in their radicalization. ‘Resentment’ means here the consolidation of a feeling of grievance that hypostatizes negative social experiences and devalues positive approaches to improving a particular situation. It expresses itself in polarization between population groups along ethnic and religious lines, the latter relating to negative experiences or perceptions of discrimination in everyday life. In resentment, such experiences and perceptions are detached from their actual context and gain a momentum of their own, ultimately remaining more or less resistant to possible positive experiences. In order to work out the specifics of affective states that are charged with resentment, the project will also explore resentment-free perceptions of self and other in the minority/majority configuration. The project is both quantitative and qualitative. A representative survey will gauge the manifestations and prevalence of social, religious and political resentment among Muslim immigrants living in Germany, while an analysis will be made of the goals and organizational structure of Islamic associations, and in particular of the patterns of perception and attitudes (for example, towards the non-Muslim environment) that these milieus cultivate. In order to shed light on the different forms by which discrimination is perceived and differences in how this perception is processed, the project will also contrast these patterns of perception with such patterns in other Muslim milieus that have no relation to the groups displaying resentment.