Resilience, Peacebuilding, and Preventing Violent Extremism: A complex systems perspective on sustaining peace

Summary

This book offers a comprehensive analysis of the complex drivers of violent extremism, challenging conventional security-led approaches by placing emphasis on social cohesion, resilience, and adaptive peacebuilding. Drawing on complexity theory, it explores how social systems adapt to stress and how peacebuilders can support societies in uncertain contexts through case studies from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East—including Syria, Iraq, Mozambique, Niger, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines. The volume provides theoretical and empirical insights into preventing and countering violent extremism while offering recommendations for strengthening institutional and social resilience. It will be of much interest to students of peacebuilding, security studies, and countering violent extremism, as well as professional practitioners. The Open Access version, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Keywords

resilience, peacebuilding, PVE, conflict prevention