Editor's Introduction

Over the past decades, we have published an array of articles on a wide range of topics in JSR, and each issue invariably presents some new surprises and discoveries. The study of radicalism is inherently transdisciplinary: of course, some articles are strictly historiographic, but more often they include, in addition to history, elements of political science, sociology, religious studies, literaturę, environmentalism, or other fields or disciplines. Sometimes an article focuses on a single figure; sometimes an article makes a larger claim about how we are to understand radicalism more broadly. This issue is no exception to these observations: its purview is transdisciplinary and some articles advance larger, sometimes daring arguments, whereas others advance knowledge in greater detail.

During 2021–2022, I will be on sabbatical, and most of the editorial work will be done by Dr. Morgan Shipley. My primary area of research during the sabbatical will be the intersection of mysticism, new religions, and religious radicalism with the contemporary and recent history of religion. I have discovered quite a bit of material on which there is little or no existing scholarship, so this is quite exciting, and the resulting book is contracted for publication by Oxford University Press. I also may well write an article or articles intended for JSR, with the aim of developing a more extensive and explicitly transdisciplinary understanding of radicalism as a field of inquiry.

Although Dr. Shipley will serve as editor of JSR for the next year, I plan to return as editor the following year, and as I mentioned before, do not expect to continue as editor of the journal indefinitely. Again, if you are a faculty member at an institution that would support your work as an editor for our journal, and you are interested in doing so, please feel free to contact me and we can discuss in more detail what that might entail. Of course, we have to work well in advance in order to arrange an appropriate transition, so this is likely a multi-year process.

This current issue of JSR begins with "Construction of Radicalization: Examination of an Important Construct in the Explanation of Terrorism" by Hillary McNeel, Lisa Sample, and Samantha Clinkinbeard, which discusses how we may best conceptualize the phenomenon of radicalization. It is common to see references to radicalization as if there is a shared understanding of what the term actually means, and in this article the authors systematically investigate how the term has been construed in various contexts, and what this extensive analysis shows us about radicalization. Our second article, "'Radical': The Age of Revolution's Atlantic Context and the Genesis of a Political Concept in France" by Remzi Çağatay Çakirlar, explores the concept "radical" in French thought, especially during the nineteenth century. In particular, he focuses on the history of the Radical Party in France, which, he argues, owes a great deal to British radicalism. In his article, he fills in significant gaps in intellectual historiography of this period to argue for a reevaluation of the relationships among French radicalism, British radicalism, and philosophical movements, in particular, utilitarianism.

In our third article, "Religion and Radicalism: The Puritanism in All Revolutions," Stephen Baskerville studies the history of Puritanism and the English Revolution in order to develop a larger case about religious (and to some extent, secular) forms of radicalism. In particular, he looks at the relationships between social change, political ideas, political theology, and radical violence, and applies his thesis to contemporary Islamism. Whether this includes all revolutions we leave to the reader, but we are pleased to see another article exploring religious forms of radicalism. Our fourth article, Francesco Landolfi's "A Theoretical Revolutionary: Eric J. Hobsbawm and the 'Sociological' Trilogy of Deviance," discusses the three books (Primitive Rebels, Bandits, Revolutionaries) by the British historian Eric J. Hobsbawm, published between 1959 and 1972. Hobsbawm saw banditry as central to understanding social protest and historical changes, and his thesis still has relevance today.

Our fifth article is Justin Helepololei's "Crime and Protest: Squatters, Mayors, and Other Social Bandits in Post-15M Spain," an ethnographic study that explores recent social protests in...