Simon Cottee
Biographic Data
| ID | 698014 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Simon Cottee |
| GIVEN NAMES | Simon |
| FAMILY NAME | Cottee |
| SIGNATURE | COTTEE S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Bangor University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8239-9689 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 108 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Radicalization Discourse: Consensus Points, Evidence Base and Blind Spots
This article examines the consensus points, evidence base and blind spots of radicalization discourse: namely, the approved ways of talking about radicalization/deradicalization that claim a special scientific or scholarly authority and that have become entrenched as a kind of socially sanctioned common sense embedded in academia, the media and government bureaucracy. Drawing on an analysis of the current 50 most cited journal articles on radical…
Watching Murder: Isis, Death Videos and Radicalization
Watching Murder shines a light onto the dark world of jihadi murder videos and the people who watch and share them on the internet. Images and videos of murder, torture and other cruelties are everywhere on the internet. Why do some people seek out and watch this material, how are they affected by it and do they have a right to watch any of it in the first place? In this ground-breaking book, terrorism scholar Simon Cottee visits the murky fringe…
Black Flags of the Caribbean: How Trinidad Became an Isis Hotspot
The Caribbean does not immediately come to mind when we think about ISIS – and yet, in 2017, Trinidad and Tobago ranked first place in the list of western countries with the highest rates of foreign-fighter radicalization, with over 240 nationals travelling to Syria and Iraq to join ISIS’ caliphate. Simon Cottee investigates how ISIS came to gain such an unlikely, yet significant foothold in Trinidad. Based on a three-year investigation in the co…
Incel (E)motives: Resentment, Shame and Revenge
This article provides a framework for thinking about incels and incel-inspired terrorism. Incels are part of a fringe online subculture that trades in misogyny, victimhood and fatalism. The aim of the article is to describe these aforementioned orientations and the emotions associated with them. Only a tiny minority of incels commit acts of incel-inspired terrorism. Research on shame and revenge provides a useful starting-point for understanding …
The Western Jihadi Subculture and Subterranean Values
This article draws on the criminological work of Gresham Sykes and David Matza as a starting point for theorizing the nature and appeal of the western jihadi subculture, defined here as a hybrid and heavily digitized global imaginary that extols and justifies violent jihad as a way of life and being. It suggests that at the centre of this subculture are three focal concerns: (1) Violence and Machismo; (2) Death and Martyrdom; and (3) Disdain of t…
Isis and the Pornography of Violence
'ISIS and the Pornography of Violence' is a collection of iconoclastic essays on ISIS, spanning the four-year period from its ascendancy in late 2014 to its demise in early 2018. From a trenchant critique of the infantilisation of jihadists to a probing examination of the parallels between gonzo porn and ISIS beheading videos, the pieces collected in this volume challenge conventional ways of thinking about ISIS and the roots of its appeal. Simon…
The calypso caliphate: How Trinidad became a recruiting ground for Isis
Trinidad and Tobago (T&T), a small twin-Island republic in the Caribbean, has one of the highest rates of foreign fighter radicalization in the western hemisphere. According to official estimates, around 130 Trinidadian nationals migrated to ISIS-controlled territory in Syria and Iraq between 2013 and 2016. This article seeks to make sense of these migrations, placing them in the broader historical and social context in which they occurred. Drawi…
Moving In and Out of Islam
With empirical case studies from Western and Central Europe, the United States, Canada, and the Middle East, this anthology opens a new field of study by exploring people’s rationales for leaving, as well as converting to, Islam.
Watching Isis: How Young Adults Engage with Official English-Language Isis Videos
Research on jihadist online propaganda (JOP) tends to focus on the production, content, and dissemination of jihadist online messages. Correspondingly, the target of JOP—that is, the audience—has thus far attracted little scholarly attention. This article seeks to redress this neglect by focusing on how audiences respond to jihadist online messaging. It presents the findings of an online pilot survey testing audience responses to clips from Engli…
The Age of Lone Wolf Terrorism
Mark S. Hamm and Ramón Spaaij combine criminological theory with empirical and ethnographic research to map lone-wolf radicalization, helping with the identification of suspected individuals and recognizing patterns of indoctrination. A combination of personal and political grievances lead lone wolves to befriend online sympathizers
What Isis Really Wants” Revisited: Religion Matters in Jihadist Violence, but How
In his influential and provocative article on “What ISIS Really Wants,” published in The Atlantic in March 2015, Graeme Wood argued that “the Islamic state is Islamic. Very Islamic.” He also sought to challenge what he diagnosed as a “western bias” among academics and policymakers toward religious ideology, whereby religious doctrines or beliefs are relegated to the status of epiphenomena rather than taken seriously as causal properties in their …
We Need to Talk About Mohammad: Criminology, Theistic Violence and the Murder of Theo Van Gogh
On 2 November 2004, Mohammad Bouyeri murdered the Dutch film-maker Theo Van Gogh. At his trial, Bouyeri proclaimed that he acted out of a religious duty. Van Gogh’s killing provoked fierce debate in the Netherlands over its meaning and significance and once again the question of violent religious fundamentalism came to dominate public discourse across Europe and beyond, just as it had in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Criminologists, however, h…
Values in Criminology and Community Justice
The way we think about crime and the way that society responds to it are imbued with values that can determine what is considered important and what gets attention. Sometimes values that are claimed may not be the values expressed in practice, as we see in the multiple and confusing discourses about victims and offenders, punishment and protection, rights and responsibilities. This collection of writings considers values in crime theory, criminal…
Terrorist (E)motives: The Existential Attractions of Terrorism
This article describes a number of possible existential motivations for engaging in terrorism. Three in particular are identified: (1) the desire for excitement, (2) the desire for ultimate meaning, and (3) the desire for glory. Terrorism, according to the argument set out here, is as much a site of individual self-drama and self-reinvention as a tactical instrument for pursuing the political goals of small groups. The conclusion explores the con…
Jihadism as a Subcultural Response to Social Strain: Extending Marc Sageman's “Bunch of Guys” Thesis
My aim in this article is to extend Marc Sageman's seminal research on Al Qaeda by re-articulating it through the prism of Albert Cohen's theory of delinquent subcultures, an approach which came to prominence in Criminology in the 1960s, but has since then been largely eclipsed by other approaches in that field. Drawing on Sageman's findings and observations, I suggest that Al Qaeda-affiliated or -inspired groups in the West can be best understoo…
Mind Slaughter: The Neutralizations of Jihadi Salafism
This article focuses on the neutralizations of the jihadi Salafi ideology. It is divided into three parts. The first describes the various rhetorical accounts that ordinary people use to neutralize conventional moral controls against inhumane conduct. The second traces how these accounts inform and drive the jihadi Salafi worldview. The third, and concluding, part of the article sketches out the policy implications of the analysis set out here, a…
The Jihadist Solution
The Suppression of Open Debate: The Case of Christopher Hitchens
Excusing Terror
The Culture of Denial: Islamic Terrorism and the Delinquent Left
The only political response to ideological fanatics and suicidal holy warriors is implacable opposition. —Michael Walzer (2001) My aim in what follows will be to argue that a culture of denial exis
Sir Leon’s shadow
Sir Leon Radzinowicz was one of the last great exemplars of modern criminology. Yet he remains, 32 years since his retirement from the Wolfson chair of Criminology at Cambridge, an almost unrecognizably distant figure, largely unexamined, if not completely eclipsed, in the existing histories of the discipline. This, partly, is because many of the questions which Radzinowicz himself confronted are quite different from those which exercise criminol…
The idea of a critical criminology: Irony, scepticism and commitment
Folk devils and moral panics: ’Left idealism’ reconsidered
This article is intended as an attack on Jock Young's use of the term 'left idealism'-that distillation of every 1960s hysteria and radicalchic inanity-to describe and to castigate the moral, political and intellectual assumptions of the emergent 'paradigm' of radical criminology in Britain of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Young's synopsis, I shall argue, is not only premised on an inadequate approach to the history of ideas; it is also highly …
Adventures in Criminology
Terrorist (E)motives: The Existential Attractions of Terrorism
This article describes a number of possible existential motivations for engaging in terrorism. Three in particular are identified: (1) the desire for excitement, (2) the desire for ultimate meaning, and (3) the desire for glory. Terrorism, according to the argument set out here, is as much a site of individual self-drama and self-reinvention as a tactical instrument for pursuing the political goals of small groups. The conclusion explores the con…
Incel (E)motives: Resentment, Shame and Revenge
This article provides a framework for thinking about incels and incel-inspired terrorism. Incels are part of a fringe online subculture that trades in misogyny, victimhood and fatalism. The aim of the article is to describe these aforementioned orientations and the emotions associated with them. Only a tiny minority of incels commit acts of incel-inspired terrorism. Research on shame and revenge provides a useful starting-point for understanding …
Jihadism as a Subcultural Response to Social Strain: Extending Marc Sageman's “Bunch of Guys” Thesis
My aim in this article is to extend Marc Sageman's seminal research on Al Qaeda by re-articulating it through the prism of Albert Cohen's theory of delinquent subcultures, an approach which came to prominence in Criminology in the 1960s, but has since then been largely eclipsed by other approaches in that field. Drawing on Sageman's findings and observations, I suggest that Al Qaeda-affiliated or -inspired groups in the West can be best understoo…
What Isis Really Wants” Revisited: Religion Matters in Jihadist Violence, but How
In his influential and provocative article on “What ISIS Really Wants,” published in The Atlantic in March 2015, Graeme Wood argued that “the Islamic state is Islamic. Very Islamic.” He also sought to challenge what he diagnosed as a “western bias” among academics and policymakers toward religious ideology, whereby religious doctrines or beliefs are relegated to the status of epiphenomena rather than taken seriously as causal properties in their …
Watching Isis: How Young Adults Engage with Official English-Language Isis Videos
Research on jihadist online propaganda (JOP) tends to focus on the production, content, and dissemination of jihadist online messages. Correspondingly, the target of JOP—that is, the audience—has thus far attracted little scholarly attention. This article seeks to redress this neglect by focusing on how audiences respond to jihadist online messaging. It presents the findings of an online pilot survey testing audience responses to clips from Engli…
Folk devils and moral panics: ’Left idealism’ reconsidered
This article is intended as an attack on Jock Young's use of the term 'left idealism'-that distillation of every 1960s hysteria and radicalchic inanity-to describe and to castigate the moral, political and intellectual assumptions of the emergent 'paradigm' of radical criminology in Britain of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Young's synopsis, I shall argue, is not only premised on an inadequate approach to the history of ideas; it is also highly …
Mind Slaughter: The Neutralizations of Jihadi Salafism
This article focuses on the neutralizations of the jihadi Salafi ideology. It is divided into three parts. The first describes the various rhetorical accounts that ordinary people use to neutralize conventional moral controls against inhumane conduct. The second traces how these accounts inform and drive the jihadi Salafi worldview. The third, and concluding, part of the article sketches out the policy implications of the analysis set out here, a…
The Western Jihadi Subculture and Subterranean Values
This article draws on the criminological work of Gresham Sykes and David Matza as a starting point for theorizing the nature and appeal of the western jihadi subculture, defined here as a hybrid and heavily digitized global imaginary that extols and justifies violent jihad as a way of life and being. It suggests that at the centre of this subculture are three focal concerns: (1) Violence and Machismo; (2) Death and Martyrdom; and (3) Disdain of t…
The Jihadist Solution
We Need to Talk About Mohammad: Criminology, Theistic Violence and the Murder of Theo Van Gogh
On 2 November 2004, Mohammad Bouyeri murdered the Dutch film-maker Theo Van Gogh. At his trial, Bouyeri proclaimed that he acted out of a religious duty. Van Gogh’s killing provoked fierce debate in the Netherlands over its meaning and significance and once again the question of violent religious fundamentalism came to dominate public discourse across Europe and beyond, just as it had in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Criminologists, however, h…
The calypso caliphate: How Trinidad became a recruiting ground for Isis
Trinidad and Tobago (T&T), a small twin-Island republic in the Caribbean, has one of the highest rates of foreign fighter radicalization in the western hemisphere. According to official estimates, around 130 Trinidadian nationals migrated to ISIS-controlled territory in Syria and Iraq between 2013 and 2016. This article seeks to make sense of these migrations, placing them in the broader historical and social context in which they occurred. Drawi…
Adventures in Criminology
Radicalization Discourse: Consensus Points, Evidence Base and Blind Spots
This article examines the consensus points, evidence base and blind spots of radicalization discourse: namely, the approved ways of talking about radicalization/deradicalization that claim a special scientific or scholarly authority and that have become entrenched as a kind of socially sanctioned common sense embedded in academia, the media and government bureaucracy. Drawing on an analysis of the current 50 most cited journal articles on radical…
The Culture of Denial: Islamic Terrorism and the Delinquent Left
The only political response to ideological fanatics and suicidal holy warriors is implacable opposition. —Michael Walzer (2001) My aim in what follows will be to argue that a culture of denial exis
The idea of a critical criminology: Irony, scepticism and commitment
Adventures in Criminology
Folk devils and moral panics: ’Left idealism’ reconsidered
This article is intended as an attack on Jock Young's use of the term 'left idealism'-that distillation of every 1960s hysteria and radicalchic inanity-to describe and to castigate the moral, political and intellectual assumptions of the emergent 'paradigm' of radical criminology in Britain of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Young's synopsis, I shall argue, is not only premised on an inadequate approach to the history of ideas; it is also highly …
The idea of a critical criminology: Irony, scepticism and commitment
The Culture of Denial: Islamic Terrorism and the Delinquent Left
The only political response to ideological fanatics and suicidal holy warriors is implacable opposition. —Michael Walzer (2001) My aim in what follows will be to argue that a culture of denial exis
Sir Leon’s shadow
Sir Leon Radzinowicz was one of the last great exemplars of modern criminology. Yet he remains, 32 years since his retirement from the Wolfson chair of Criminology at Cambridge, an almost unrecognizably distant figure, largely unexamined, if not completely eclipsed, in the existing histories of the discipline. This, partly, is because many of the questions which Radzinowicz himself confronted are quite different from those which exercise criminol…
Excusing Terror
The Suppression of Open Debate: The Case of Christopher Hitchens
The Jihadist Solution
Mind Slaughter: The Neutralizations of Jihadi Salafism
This article focuses on the neutralizations of the jihadi Salafi ideology. It is divided into three parts. The first describes the various rhetorical accounts that ordinary people use to neutralize conventional moral controls against inhumane conduct. The second traces how these accounts inform and drive the jihadi Salafi worldview. The third, and concluding, part of the article sketches out the policy implications of the analysis set out here, a…
Terrorist (E)motives: The Existential Attractions of Terrorism
This article describes a number of possible existential motivations for engaging in terrorism. Three in particular are identified: (1) the desire for excitement, (2) the desire for ultimate meaning, and (3) the desire for glory. Terrorism, according to the argument set out here, is as much a site of individual self-drama and self-reinvention as a tactical instrument for pursuing the political goals of small groups. The conclusion explores the con…
Jihadism as a Subcultural Response to Social Strain: Extending Marc Sageman's “Bunch of Guys” Thesis
My aim in this article is to extend Marc Sageman's seminal research on Al Qaeda by re-articulating it through the prism of Albert Cohen's theory of delinquent subcultures, an approach which came to prominence in Criminology in the 1960s, but has since then been largely eclipsed by other approaches in that field. Drawing on Sageman's findings and observations, I suggest that Al Qaeda-affiliated or -inspired groups in the West can be best understoo…
Values in Criminology and Community Justice
The way we think about crime and the way that society responds to it are imbued with values that can determine what is considered important and what gets attention. Sometimes values that are claimed may not be the values expressed in practice, as we see in the multiple and confusing discourses about victims and offenders, punishment and protection, rights and responsibilities. This collection of writings considers values in crime theory, criminal…
We Need to Talk About Mohammad: Criminology, Theistic Violence and the Murder of Theo Van Gogh
On 2 November 2004, Mohammad Bouyeri murdered the Dutch film-maker Theo Van Gogh. At his trial, Bouyeri proclaimed that he acted out of a religious duty. Van Gogh’s killing provoked fierce debate in the Netherlands over its meaning and significance and once again the question of violent religious fundamentalism came to dominate public discourse across Europe and beyond, just as it had in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Criminologists, however, h…
What Isis Really Wants” Revisited: Religion Matters in Jihadist Violence, but How
In his influential and provocative article on “What ISIS Really Wants,” published in The Atlantic in March 2015, Graeme Wood argued that “the Islamic state is Islamic. Very Islamic.” He also sought to challenge what he diagnosed as a “western bias” among academics and policymakers toward religious ideology, whereby religious doctrines or beliefs are relegated to the status of epiphenomena rather than taken seriously as causal properties in their …
The Age of Lone Wolf Terrorism
Mark S. Hamm and Ramón Spaaij combine criminological theory with empirical and ethnographic research to map lone-wolf radicalization, helping with the identification of suspected individuals and recognizing patterns of indoctrination. A combination of personal and political grievances lead lone wolves to befriend online sympathizers
Moving In and Out of Islam
With empirical case studies from Western and Central Europe, the United States, Canada, and the Middle East, this anthology opens a new field of study by exploring people’s rationales for leaving, as well as converting to, Islam.
Watching Isis: How Young Adults Engage with Official English-Language Isis Videos
Research on jihadist online propaganda (JOP) tends to focus on the production, content, and dissemination of jihadist online messages. Correspondingly, the target of JOP—that is, the audience—has thus far attracted little scholarly attention. This article seeks to redress this neglect by focusing on how audiences respond to jihadist online messaging. It presents the findings of an online pilot survey testing audience responses to clips from Engli…
Isis and the Pornography of Violence
'ISIS and the Pornography of Violence' is a collection of iconoclastic essays on ISIS, spanning the four-year period from its ascendancy in late 2014 to its demise in early 2018. From a trenchant critique of the infantilisation of jihadists to a probing examination of the parallels between gonzo porn and ISIS beheading videos, the pieces collected in this volume challenge conventional ways of thinking about ISIS and the roots of its appeal. Simon…
The calypso caliphate: How Trinidad became a recruiting ground for Isis
Trinidad and Tobago (T&T), a small twin-Island republic in the Caribbean, has one of the highest rates of foreign fighter radicalization in the western hemisphere. According to official estimates, around 130 Trinidadian nationals migrated to ISIS-controlled territory in Syria and Iraq between 2013 and 2016. This article seeks to make sense of these migrations, placing them in the broader historical and social context in which they occurred. Drawi…
Incel (E)motives: Resentment, Shame and Revenge
This article provides a framework for thinking about incels and incel-inspired terrorism. Incels are part of a fringe online subculture that trades in misogyny, victimhood and fatalism. The aim of the article is to describe these aforementioned orientations and the emotions associated with them. Only a tiny minority of incels commit acts of incel-inspired terrorism. Research on shame and revenge provides a useful starting-point for understanding …
The Western Jihadi Subculture and Subterranean Values
This article draws on the criminological work of Gresham Sykes and David Matza as a starting point for theorizing the nature and appeal of the western jihadi subculture, defined here as a hybrid and heavily digitized global imaginary that extols and justifies violent jihad as a way of life and being. It suggests that at the centre of this subculture are three focal concerns: (1) Violence and Machismo; (2) Death and Martyrdom; and (3) Disdain of t…
Black Flags of the Caribbean: How Trinidad Became an Isis Hotspot
The Caribbean does not immediately come to mind when we think about ISIS – and yet, in 2017, Trinidad and Tobago ranked first place in the list of western countries with the highest rates of foreign-fighter radicalization, with over 240 nationals travelling to Syria and Iraq to join ISIS’ caliphate. Simon Cottee investigates how ISIS came to gain such an unlikely, yet significant foothold in Trinidad. Based on a three-year investigation in the co…
Watching Murder: Isis, Death Videos and Radicalization
Watching Murder shines a light onto the dark world of jihadi murder videos and the people who watch and share them on the internet. Images and videos of murder, torture and other cruelties are everywhere on the internet. Why do some people seek out and watch this material, how are they affected by it and do they have a right to watch any of it in the first place? In this ground-breaking book, terrorism scholar Simon Cottee visits the murky fringe…
Radicalization Discourse: Consensus Points, Evidence Base and Blind Spots
This article examines the consensus points, evidence base and blind spots of radicalization discourse: namely, the approved ways of talking about radicalization/deradicalization that claim a special scientific or scholarly authority and that have become entrenched as a kind of socially sanctioned common sense embedded in academia, the media and government bureaucracy. Drawing on an analysis of the current 50 most cited journal articles on radical…
Criminology (18 works) · Political science (17 works) · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence (17 works) · Law (16 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Psychology (11 works) · Law (9 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Politics (9 works) · Terrorism (9 works)