by Steven R. Corman NSI has just released a new edited volume (PDF here) that should be of interest to COMOPS Journal readers.  Entitled Countering Violent Extremism: Scientific Methods and Strategies, it contains the latest thinking on the subject, including a chapter on narrative by yours truly.  The contents are listed below. Foreword (Brig. Gen. [...]

by Steven R. Corman Friend-of-CSC Steve Tatham has co-authored a new book with Major General Andrew Mackay entitled Behavioural Conflict: Why Understanding People and their Motivations Will Prove Decisive in Future Conflict.  I have not yet seen the book, but it will be on my reading list.  All proceeds from book sales go to Help [...]

by Steven R. Corman The CSC has released a new white paper entitled A New Cultural Path for Indonesia’s Islamist PKS? by Mark Woodward, Ali Amin, Inaya Rohmaniyah, and Chris Lundry.  The executive summary is as follows: With the commencement of Indonesia?s transition to democracy, following 32 years of rule by the military dictator Suharto, [...]

by Steven R. Corman The CSC has released a new white paper entitled The Tariq ibn Ziyad Master Narrative by Jeffry R. Halverson.  The executive summary is as follows: Master narratives provide important insights into the cultures and societies that analysts and diplomats encounter on a daily basis. Understanding how those narratives are utilized by [...]

CSC members Jeff Halverson, Bud Goodall, and Steve Corman have published a new book entitled Master Narratives of Islamist Extremism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).  The book describes a framework for analyzing cultural narratives that extremists use to influence contested populations, then applies that framework to thirteen master narratives in contemporary use, including The Pharaoh The Jahiliyyah [...]

by Jeffry R. Halverson The following is a summary of some arguments  from my new book, Theology and Creed in Sunni Islam: The Muslim Brotherhood, Ash’arism, and Political Sunnism, published by Palgrave Macmillan.  It offers an explanation of why fundamentalist literal interpretations of the Qu’ran have so much influence in contemporary Islamist extremism, and why [...]

The Consortium for Strategic Communication has just released a new white paper entitled Out of Their Heads and Into Their Conversation: Countering Extremist Ideology by Angela Trethewey, Steven R. Corman and Bud Goodall. The complete paper can be downloaded at http://comops.org/article/123.pdf Executive Summary Ideology is often ignored or deemed irrelevant to strategic communication because it [...]

by Steven R. Corman Two new counterterrorism journals have recently launched that should be of interest to COMOPS Journal readers. The first is Perspectives on Terrorism. It is a new journal of the Terrorism Research Initiative, with a mission to ” support the international community of terrorism researchers and scholars especially through the facilitation of [...]