Radicalization: Difference between revisions
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1. '''The World System of Football''' | 1. '''The World System of Football''' | ||
In this project, I examine movements of players from one team to another and see how various sociological theories can be applied to explain these movements. Currently, I have a data set of movements among those currently playing in the first division of Spain's la Liga. There are 20 teams and approximately 25 players in each teams. And in their senior careers, they have made more than 1,600 | In this project, I examine movements of players from one team to another and see how various sociological theories can be applied to explain these movements. Currently, I have a data set of movements among those currently playing in the first division of Spain's la Liga. There are 20 teams and approximately 25 players in each teams. And in their senior careers, they have made more than 1,600 moves. Vertices (400+ teams worldwide) have already been geographically coded and the analysis will be done using [http://vlado.fmf.uni-lj.si/pub/networks/pajek/ Pajek]. More background information can be found at [http://www.patrickdoreian.com Patrick Doreian's website] who started the project. | ||
2. '''Ethnicity as Complex Adaptive Systems''' | 2. '''Ethnicity as Complex Adaptive Systems''' | ||
In the social sciences, it is widely agreed that concepts such as race and ethnicity are socially constructed. One landmark example include the increase in the number of the native American population in the U.S. during the 1980s that cannot be explain solely by demographic factors (For more info, see Joan Nagel's vita for the list of her papers that can be found [http://www.sociology.ku.edu/~sociology/people/nagel/ here]). In my project, based on demographic census and nationally representative census data and my observation from the field, I aim to predict how people who claim their indigenous identities will change under today's rapidly changing societies in Guatemala and Nicaragua, mainly because of two major factors: neoliberal multiculturalism and international migration. The project will be divided into three parts: In the first part, applying balance theory and the concept of biased networks, I examine the mechanisms through which people give up or re-confirm their indigenous identities and how today's circumstances affect such identities. In the second part, using the framework of contagion networks (SEIR), I examine how changes in societies may affect the proportion of indigenous groups in the two countries and what can explain the difference in the maintenance of indigenous cultures in the two countries. Finally, extending the Fararo-Kosaka model of the image of social stratification, I will analyze and predict general images of ethnic minorities that the majority of people would hold and what influence the stabilization of these images. | In the social sciences, it is widely agreed that concepts such as race and ethnicity are socially constructed. One landmark example include the increase in the number of the native American population in the U.S. during the 1980s that cannot be explain solely by demographic factors (For more info, see Joan Nagel's vita for the list of her papers that can be found [http://www.sociology.ku.edu/~sociology/people/nagel/ here]). In my project, based on demographic census and nationally representative census data and my observation from the field, I aim to predict how people who claim their indigenous identities will change under today's rapidly changing societies in Guatemala and Nicaragua, mainly because of two major factors: neoliberal multiculturalism and international migration. The project will be divided into three parts: In the first part, applying balance theory and the concept of biased networks, I examine the mechanisms through which people give up or re-confirm their indigenous identities and how today's circumstances affect such identities. In the second part, using the framework of contagion networks (SEIR), I examine how changes in societies may affect the proportion of indigenous groups in the two countries and what can explain the difference in the maintenance of indigenous cultures in the two countries. Finally, extending the Fararo-Kosaka model of the image of social stratification, I will analyze and predict general images of ethnic minorities that the majority of people would hold and what influence the stabilization of these images. | ||
Revision as of 16:49, 21 June 2009
Members
This wiki only has the summary of our intention, interested individual should talk to any of the group members
Background
Current US counter-terrorism efforts have either scattered, killed or captured Al-Qaeda's core leadership, reducing the threat from its central core operatives, foot-soldiers and leaders. However, the Jihad-Salafism continues to spread at an exponential rate across various locales, as a result creating subcultures within vulnerable Islamic Diaspora communities. The threat from radicalized Salafist-Jihadists has evolved and has become diasporic (e.g.: Madrid 2004, Amsterdam Hofstad group, London 2005, Toronto 18 Case and Australia's Operation Pendennis) in nature.
The aim of this project is two-fold:
[1] Radicalization process: Recent modeling efforts have focus on strategic measures of controlling terrorism, few have focus primarily on the horizontal process of fanaticism. However, these models fail to incorporate various dynamics (oblique and vertical process of fanaticism). In our project, we model the process of radicalization that includes ideological transmission with differential recruitments.
[2] Control Mechanism: In this project, we hope to develop new kind of control mechanism we have called reactive control. Usually, application of control theory requires one to know the equations representing the system of interest. However, most real world problems, at least the interesting one, do not have any concrete equations. In order to circumvent this problem, we hope to develop a coarse-grained control theory that adaptively adjusts to the mechanism of interests.
The methods we hope to develop and apply are general and can be applied to various disciplines and applications (fads, contagion, control of disease, implementation of robust policy, etc....)
Two Loosely Related Projects
The below projects are individual projects that I am working on. The themes of the projects have nothing to do with terrorist networks, but these projects use similar methods: Hirotoshi Yoshioka
1. The World System of Football In this project, I examine movements of players from one team to another and see how various sociological theories can be applied to explain these movements. Currently, I have a data set of movements among those currently playing in the first division of Spain's la Liga. There are 20 teams and approximately 25 players in each teams. And in their senior careers, they have made more than 1,600 moves. Vertices (400+ teams worldwide) have already been geographically coded and the analysis will be done using Pajek. More background information can be found at Patrick Doreian's website who started the project.
2. Ethnicity as Complex Adaptive Systems
In the social sciences, it is widely agreed that concepts such as race and ethnicity are socially constructed. One landmark example include the increase in the number of the native American population in the U.S. during the 1980s that cannot be explain solely by demographic factors (For more info, see Joan Nagel's vita for the list of her papers that can be found here). In my project, based on demographic census and nationally representative census data and my observation from the field, I aim to predict how people who claim their indigenous identities will change under today's rapidly changing societies in Guatemala and Nicaragua, mainly because of two major factors: neoliberal multiculturalism and international migration. The project will be divided into three parts: In the first part, applying balance theory and the concept of biased networks, I examine the mechanisms through which people give up or re-confirm their indigenous identities and how today's circumstances affect such identities. In the second part, using the framework of contagion networks (SEIR), I examine how changes in societies may affect the proportion of indigenous groups in the two countries and what can explain the difference in the maintenance of indigenous cultures in the two countries. Finally, extending the Fararo-Kosaka model of the image of social stratification, I will analyze and predict general images of ethnic minorities that the majority of people would hold and what influence the stabilization of these images.