A few months ago I put in a plug for Scott Atran’s new book, In Gods We Trust[1], but I didn’t realize that he has tried to get some of his ideas applied. Here is an abstract of an op-ed that he wrote after the Madrid bombings where he argues that we are not facing an ideological superstructure, but a de-centralized movement that taps into normal psychological needs. The idea that Al Qaeda isn’t centralized isn’t new, but Atran has a background in suicide bomber psychology research, and he argues that the phenomena isn’t manifestation of socio or psycho pathology, but rather, it is drawing upon banal but evolutionarily derived needs (for instance, community). These conclusions are unoriginal, but they now stand on many pillars (that is, from sociology, anthropology, historiography, etc.).
[1] For other perspectives on religion, I suggest A Theory of Religion (dry, rational choice) and Darwin’s Cathedral (tenditious group selectionism + functionalism, but interesting).
Posted by razib at 03:16 PM