Epitomizing 'Trust' in Violent Extremism Research

Summary

Studying violent extremism as Islamist extremism and Islamist terrorism has influenced terrorism studies since 9/11 (Rabasa et al. 2004; Edwards and Gomis 2011; Smith and Zeigler 2017). In the East African region, Kenya has a longstanding history of programmes for preventing and countering violent extremism (PCVE), which have been successful, encountered challenges, and improved over time (Badurdeen 2023). Research on these PCVE programmes is pivotal in building empirical knowledge to enhance policy, programming, and practices. Academics have built a relatively rich knowledge base on different forms of political violence, terrorism, and more recently, violent extremism in Kenya. Most studies about the Islamist-oriented framing of violent extremism in Kenya focused on the Kenyan coast due to the origins of extremist local networks (Mwakimako 2018; Badurdeen 2018a; Nyagah, Mwangi and Attree 2019). This does not mean extremist networks do not exist in other parts of the country. However, the coast with the historical landscapes of structured and perceived marginalisation constituted grievances that were exploited by extremist entrepreneurs paving the way for extremist movements (Badurdeen 2023; Badurdeen 2021; Breidlid 2021; Botha 2014). Despite the rich knowledge emanating from research on violent extremism, very few studies (Ajil 2023; Badurdeen 2018b) have ventured into the experiential journey of building trust between the researcher and the subjects of research, here called “the researched.” The need to co-create knowledge with the researched is widely advocated in participatory research (Horst and Erdal 2018). Knowledge co-creation as a collaborative inquiry process focuses on researching “with” rather than “on” people. This collaborative knowledge generation by academics working alongside other stakeholders has the potential for “moving beyond the ivory towers” to deliver significant societal impact via dynamic, locally adaptive community‐academic partnerships (Greenhalgh 2016, 392). Identifying ways to foster trust while adhering to ethical conduct and values of safeguarding human dignity is critical to meeting integrity standards in research endeavours in the knowledge co-creation process, especially when studying amplified topics such as violence in Africa (Apard and Maingraud-Martinaud 2021). In the study of politically laden topics such as terrorism and violent extremism, the epistemology of co-creating knowledge is often top-down, elite-centric, and politically instigated (Breakfast, Kwitshi and Johnson 2022; Ditrych 2013; Jackson 2007; Chouliaraki 2007; Bhatia 2005). Therefore, knowledge construction of terms such as violent extremism is rarely apolitical and leads to distrust and mistrust of the knowledge producers, especially by communities that are affected by the phenomenon studied. These stigmatised communities are often suspicious of researchers, as they believe the researcher is driven by ulterior motives of external institutions or agendas; or subscribes to different worldviews compared to the researched participants (See: Chukwuma 2024; Banyanga 2021; Badurdeen 2018). This underscores the importance of trust-building with communities in highly stressed environments that may be sceptical of the researcher or the topic studied—such as violent extremism. Hence understanding trust, and its interconnectedness with values and ethics in fieldwork influences the researcher-researched relationship to co-create knowledge (Kreiling and Paunov 2021; Langley, Wolstenholme and Cooke 2018). Very little knowledge is built in this context of how to build rapport or trust-building with interlocutors to co-construct knowledge on violent extremism. Such co-construction of knowledge strengthens the locals in turn to conceptualise violent extremism and is vital in exploring avenues for preventing violent extremism (Badurdeen, Aroussi and Jakala 2022) and peacebuilding (Mignolo 2009; Jabri 2016; Nupia and Espinosa 2023). In this respect, the locals become advocates for co-producing knowledge, recognising the experiential knowledge of local communities in understanding and solving violence in their environments (Mac Ginty and Richmond 2013). Accordingly, trust-building is critical to support the co-creation of knowledge, understanding the existence of different local knowledge in communities, and the battles over epistemic authority unleashed by external agents (Danielsson 2020). This article explores this void of trust-building of the researcher-researched dynamics in violent extremism research among stigmatised and hard-to-reach communities. This article is based on reflections drawn from the research workshop, “Trust-Building, Gendered Nuances, and Decoloniality in Researching Violent Extremism,” organised by the author. This workshop is part of a larger collaborative project: “Values, Ethics and Trust in Peacebuilding Network,” led in collaboration with Coventry University (UK) and Osaka Jogaukin University (Japan), funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Networking Grant of the United Nations Year of Trust and Peace. The project comprised a series of five workshops in the United Kingdom (UK), Kenya, and the Philippines. Workshops were understood as instruments to generate knowledge and foster engagement through collaborative discussions between the participants and the facilitators. This engagement was deemed key in establishing the credibility of qualitative research findings. The author was a co-investigator of the overall project and lead facilitator of the Kenyan workshop, which took place on 15 and 16 November 2022, at the Technical University of Mombasa. The author analyses the views and collective reflections of the workshop.

Keywords

trust-building, violent extremism research, fieldwork, co-creation, ethics, stigmatised communities, Kenya