This is an introductory chapter highlighting how ISIS constructs its worldview by misinterpreting Islamic foundational texts and presenting human ideologies as divine revelation. It explains that ISIS ideologues, beginning with figures such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, isolate Quranic verses from their broader exegetical context and use these distorted readings to justify violence. Central to this process is the concept of takfīr, or excommunication, which became ISIS’s tool for claiming authority over who belongs to Islam and who does not. The chapter stresses the importance of distinguishing between sacred texts and the long history of human interpretations, a distinction ISIS intentionally neglects so that it can legitimize its political and military aims. It also surveys three common narratives about ISIS: that it is a Western creation, that it continues the legacy of the Kharijites, and that it reflects Islam as a whole. By outlining the weaknesses of these views, the chapter argues that understanding ISIS requires examining its own literature and hermeneutical practices. This sets the foundation for interpreting ISIS as an ideological phenomenon rather than an Islamic one.

This chapter examines ISIS’s systematic ideological logic, which emerges from a rejectionist worldview that sees the world through the lens of kāfir and aspires to fight Muslims they deem nonbelievers. This perspective attracts those who feel persecuted or despondent and are seeking a triumphant vision shared by like-minded individuals. By offering a magical or pseudo-religious “solution” to widespread social and political problems, ISIS gains ideological acceptance and easily convinces sympathizers to recognize the group as the only legitimate authority. The chapter highlights how ISIS rejects the present world in favor of a fictitious divine alternative, reducing other expressions of Islam to kufr and standing in opposition even to Salafi-jihadists. It argues that ISIS distorts Islam by presenting its doctrine as religion and constructs a false alternative reality grounded in the belief that divine empowerment (tamkīn) guarantees victory over those they refuse to see as true Muslims.

Standard applications of psychology to addressing poverty involve the facilitation of decision-making orientations associated with flourishing, such as feeling high personal efficacy and regulating one’s behavior to fit long-term goals. Although such versions of agency and self-regulation may be helpful in Euro-American middle-class settings, their suitability is rarely considered for the kind of non-Western, nonaffluent settings in which the majority of the world’s population lives. In addressing this, we recommend analyzing how the accessibility and suitability of decision-making processes are shaped by the socioecological context in which decision-making takes place. Drawing on socioecological, cultural, and political psychology, we present a multilayered framework in which optimal decision-making mindsets are shaped by the material conditions, interpersonal relations, and societal discursive frames in which people are embedded. We illustrate the framework through the case study of migrant workers who caste marginalized in India, an emerging economy that is host to many behavioral anti-poverty efforts.

Certain beliefs are seen as serious threats to societies and individuals, especially when technology disproportionately amplifies their range and impact. Yet these dangerous beliefs can offer psychological benefits, such as epistemic clarity and stress reduction. They also fulfill potent social needs for cohesion, purpose, excitement, and power, acting as a social currency by providing justifications for preexisting antisociality, targets for hate, reasons to take violent action, access to groups of like-minded believers, and status within such groups. Given the multiple needs involved, devaluing these beliefs requires multiple strategies both for increasing their social costs and for meeting believers’ needs in other ways.

Economics has always had its discontents. Even in its age of consensus after World War II, there were those who pointed to paths not taken and worried about the choices made. Looking through the presidential and distinguished lectures at the American Economics Association (AEA) annual convention, one discovers that discontent reached new heights in the early 1970s. And yet, on balance, the response that met radical economists’ critique of conventional economics was one of rejection. There were three salient types of responses. One was to indict radical economics as being less than proper science for an alleged lack of empirical achievement and depth, while dismissing its ambitious research agendas. Another response was to accept the ambitions but to deem them already satisfied by existing scholarship. A third response was to move the discussion to an evaluation of Karl Marx’s economics, and so striking injury to the alleged foundations of the radical approach. All three responses are telling of the biographies and trajectories of their authors, Robert Solow, Assar Lindbeck, and Paul Samuelson, and testify a very shallow understanding of what radical economics was about.

Considers what the book covers and what it does not. Provides historiographical context about food cultures among the enslaved, many of which focused on what people ate, whether they were “well-fed” and “Mammies” within domestic spaces. Instead, this book centers everyday routines of food distribution, preparation, and consumption among the enslaved, stressing the vital role played by women who cooked for the quarters within slavery’s wider capitalistic development. Explores Black feminist epistemologies offering alternative methodologies where archival evidence is lacking. Questions dominant modes of feminist thinking. Rather than defining homes and kitchens as prisons, they can be refuges from a racist outside world, a “homeplace.” Examines the duality of cooking as a monotonous chore and an expression of love, and the key concept of “othermothering.” Explains how I utilize the terms “nurses” and “age” and my contribution to methodological discussions of primary sources, including WPA narratives, published autobiographies, travel accounts, enslavers’ records (especially postbellum), and archaeological evidence. Elaborates on regionality and temporality within the research.

This chapter focuses on Amis’s short story ‘State of England’ to examine the role of the British Empire in Amis’s literary and cultural imagination. I argue that imperial meta-narratives echo in Amis’s writing in the form of parallel spaces – nightclubs, science-fictional solar systems, global financial systems – that imaginatively persist in spite of post-Thatcherian England’s decline. Amis treats the idea of empire as a floating signifier, a heterotopia that his protagonists are both drawn to and alienated from. I draw a line from Joseph Addison’s ‘The Royal Exchange’ to Amis’s perspective on domestic Britishness as an ultimately imperial form of identity. The structural tragedy for Amis’s characters is that their ‘imperial’ explanatory mechanisms for English life, particularly among the underclass, remain private psychological affairs.

Recognizing deprivation and injustice, Musa Sadr is the founder of the Movement of the Deprived (Amal), originally a nonsectarian movement for the marginalized. He opposes feudalism and holds a complex view of leftist movements. Rather than a separate sect within Islam, Sadr considers Shiʿism as an ideology of the Muslim vanguard, emphasizing ijtihad (innovative interpretation) and social solidarity. He discusses the interconnectedness of the Arab world, the threat of Israel and his vision for a unified Lebanon where communities coexist, expressing optimism about the Shiʿi community’s future role.

Georges Didi-Huberman asks, “How can we ask ethical questions through aesthetic problems?”. In a world shaped by visual material and human rights struggles, art history is uniquely positioned to explore this question. Beyond thematic connections between art and human rights, art history examines the power of the aesthetic experience to unsettle conventional thought and foster critical engagement. As a discipline, art history investigates this transformative capacity through aesthetic form and material conditions. It draws on aesthetic theories from Kant and Schiller to Hegel and Adorno, to explore art’s role in constructing democracy and a culture of human rights. Social art history, meanwhile, examines art’s connection to social contexts and ideology, analysing how aesthetics can interrogate human rights violations and envision justice. Engaging theorists from philosophy of aesthetics and social art history, along with cases from Latin America, this chapter explores how the aesthetic experience and its analysis support human rights principles and norms. It further proposes pedagogical models for innovative learning possibilities around art history and human rights.

This chapter concludes the book, which examines why Islamist civil wars are especially resistant to resolution and explores pathways toward their end. It draws out conclusions based on the quantitative analyses as well as the case studies of Afghanistan, Mauritania, Mali, and Syria, showing how conflicts framed in Islamist terms can become strategically embedded within transnational networks, increasing uncertainty about actors’ strength and resolve, thereby adding to their intractability. Importantly, Islamist civil wars are not inherently unresolvable; rather, their persistence stems from external entanglements. Insulating conflicts is key to their resolution. Endings of Islamist conflicts may come with setbacks for women’s rights and minority protections, underscoring the need for third parties to mitigate this. The chapter discusses how our book bridges the conflict resolution literature and strategic studies, emphasizing the role of transnational dynamics over ideology alone. It concludes with policy implications: prioritize localization and discourage external entanglement to create openings for conflict resolution in Islamist civil wars.

Chapter 3 reviews understandings of ideology and concludes with a discussion of Verschueren’s characterization of ideology and its manifestations in discourse. These theses, with the attributes of ideology identified by Eagleton, provide the bases for the arguments that Amnesty’s appeals and related documents are indeed elements of ideological discourse. According to Eagleton, ideologies are not necessarily instruments of false consciousness; they are constructed to promote the interests of a group, motivate its members to act in the group’s interest, legitimate those interests and actions by presenting them as natural, universal, normative and rational. The analysis shows that while the appeals are designed to persuade their addressees, they are also intended to motivate AI members. The chapter addresses Verschueren’s characterizations of ideology: rarely questioned and potentially hegemonic language use; a normative aspect of social reality manifested across multiple discourse genres; immune to experience and observation often represented implicitly and resistant to explicit expression. It frames, validates, explains and legitimates attitudes, states of affairs, and actions.