Pathways to Violent and Nonviolent Extremism: A Methodology for Studying U.S. Extremists, 2015-2021

Ana Velitchkova, University of Mississippi

In his presidential address two decades ago, Andy Abbott advocated that historically oriented social scientists focus on “the historicality of individuals” (Abbott 2005). The historicality of individuals refers to the fact that individuals carry forward experiences from past moments to future ones for a long time resulting in biological, memorial, and recorded continuity. I develop a methodology for capturing the historicality of domestic extremists in the United States before, during, and immediately after the presidency of Donald Trump (2015-2021). To goal is to identify pathways that led individuals to violent or nonviolent extremism. During this period, extremist rhetoric became mainstream. This period thus offers a critical context for examining a practical socialization theory of violence I developed (Velitchkova 2022) against traditional normative socialization models emphasizing the norms and rules of the community. To identify different pathways to extremism, I am working to create a dataset of biographies of U.S. extremists. For each person-case in the new dataset, I am developing deductive biographical variables drawing from different socialization theories and inductive variables capturing new insights from publicly available biographical information. Biographical information comes from in-depth media investigations of U.S. extremists. Tracing the shared aspects of violent and nonviolent extremists’ “careers” can shed light on the historical conditions that produced the heightened levels of extremist violence in the United States in this period.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 144. Cultural Practices and Collective Mobilization