The concept of 'radicalization' is now used to account for all forms of violent and non-violent political Islam. Used widely within the security services and picked up by academia, the term was initially coined by the General Intelligence and Security Service of the Netherlands (AIVD) after the 9/11 and Pentagon attacks, an origin that is rarely recognised. This book comprises contributions from leading scholars in the field of critical security studies to trace the introduction, adoption and dissemination of 'radicalization' as a concept. It is the first book to offer a critical analysis and history of the term as an 'empty signifier', that is, a word that might not necessarily refer to something existing in the real world. The diverse contributions consider how the term has circulated since its emergence in the Netherlands and Belgium, its appearance in academia, its existence among the people categorized as 'radicals' and its impact on relationships of trust between public officials and their clients. Building on the traditions of critical security studies and critical studies on terrorism, the book reaffirms the importance of a reflective approach to counter-radicalization discourse and policies. It will be essential reading for scholars of security studies, political anthropology, the study of Islam in the west and European studies.

The Postcolonial Low Countries is the first book to bring together critical and comparative approaches to the emergent field of neerlandophone postcolonial studies. The collection of essays ranges across the cultures and literatures of the Netherlands and Belgium and establishes an encounter between postcolonial theoretical discourses from both within and without the region. Each one of the contributions puts under pressure the definitive concepts of postcolonial studies in its more conventional anglophone or francophone formation, as well as perceptions of the Low Countries, Belgium and the Netherlands, as lying outside or to the side of the postcolonial domain. In the Low Countries, local and regional issues concerning multiculturalism and colonial belatedness have raised important questions about the possible grounds on which postcolonial critical concepts might be not only translated but also generated afresh, to suit these paradoxically new contexts. As The Postcolonial Low Countries incisively demonstrates, the Low Countries demand a careful rearticulation of such postcolonial 'readymades' as hybridity, accommodation and creolization. Gathering together contributions from both internationally renowned scholars and newly established researchers in the field, The Postcolonial Low Countries maps previously underexplored national and transnational literary critical trajectories. The book challenges in boundary shifting ways current readings of the so-described multicultural and postcolonial Netherlands and Belgium.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on bloomsburycollections.com Taking its cue from the study of 'lived religion', Secular Bodies, Affects and Emotions shows how the idea of a secular public is equally marked by a display and cultivation of affect and emotions. Whereas it is widely agreed that religion is often saturated by emotion, the secular is usually treated as a neutral background serving as the domain of public, rational deliberation. This book demonstrates that secularity and secularism are also upheld by bodily practices and emotional attachments. Drawing on empirical case studies, this is the first book to ask and explore whether a secular body exists. Building on the work of Talal Asad, the book argues that the secular is not an absence of religion, but a positive entity that comes about through its co-constitutive relationship with religion. And, once we attune ourselves to recognizing its operations as grammar which structures social practice, writing an anthropology of the secular could become a new possibility.

The concept of 'radicalization' is now used to account for all forms of violent and non-violent political Islam. Used widely within the security services and picked up by academia, the term was initially coined by the General Intelligence and Security Service of the Netherlands (AIVD) after the 9/11 and Pentagon attacks, an origin that is rarely recognised. This book comprises contributions from leading scholars in the field of critical security studies to trace the introduction, adoption and dissemination of 'radicalization' as a concept. It is the first book to offer a critical analysis and history of the term as an 'empty signifier', that is, a word that might not necessarily refer to something existing in the real world. The diverse contributions consider how the term has circulated since its emergence in the Netherlands and Belgium, its appearance in academia, its existence among the people categorized as 'radicals' and its impact on relationships of trust between public officials and their clients. Building on the traditions of critical security studies and critical studies on terrorism, the book reaffirms the importance of a reflective approach to counter-radicalization discourse and policies. It will be essential reading for scholars of security studies, political anthropology, the study of Islam in the west and European studies.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com Taking its cue from the study of 'lived religion', Secular Bodies, Affects and Emotions shows how the idea of a secular public is equally marked by a display and cultivation of affect and emotions. Whereas it is widely agreed that religion is often saturated by emotion, the secular is usually treated as a neutral background serving as the domain of public, rational deliberation. This book demonstrates that secularity and secularism are also upheld by bodily practices and emotional attachments. Drawing on empirical case studies, this is the first book to ask and explore whether a secular body exists. Building on the work of Talal Asad, the book argues that the secular is not an absence of religion, but a positive entity that comes about through its co-constitutive relationship with religion. And, once we attune ourselves to recognizing its operations as grammar which structures social practice, writing an anthropology of the secular could become a new possibility.