I recently completed some required online training on 'Prevent' (the UK government's strategy to reduce the chances of people becoming terrorists).
Driven by statutory requirement the training was unsurprisingly not hugely inspiring. However, one part of the module did cause me to perk up a little - if for entirely the wrong reason.
The module supposes that:
"One widely held theory is that terrorism, or an act of terrorism, is only the tip of an iceberg. An iceberg only has 10% of its mass above the water and the analogy is that underneath the terrorist attack there is a great deal going on, including the exposure of individuals to influences that drew them into terrorism..."
Complete with an interactive picture of the pointy shaped iceberg of everyone's imagination, the trainers argue that people who eventually become terrorists are those with a complaint who move through a process of radicalisation, as if going from the bottom of the iceberg to the top.
There's lots here that's not to like.
Firstly, the 'widely held theory'. Hmmm. Well, its difficult to find evidence of it being very widely held. A few newspaper articles seem to invoke the idea and a couple of academic writers seem to have given a nod to it. Who in practice I wonder holds this theory?
As for it being a theory - well, if a theory is a model of something in the real world and the image of an iceberg is considered to be a model, then yes its a theory. But its a terribly worked theory....Surely these chaps can do better?
Finally, for practical purposes, what does the model as it stands enable us to think about in terms of radicalisation? Not very much that is useful sadly. So it helps us see that the terrorists who commit an offence don't just exist in isolation. Wow. And maybe perhaps we can see each terrorist has a past when they were not terrorists but were perhaps in the process of becoming one. Again, not particularly surprising (though sadly not logically anything to do with icebergs and how they are formed). Beyond that the theory offers nothing.
So the whole iceberg thing is a pleasant distraction for us in the training and gives us a neat short cut to understanding a key point.
Where's the harm in that?
No harm I guess. Its just a bit naff really. And gives theorists and trainers a bad name.
The problem is that they have focused most of their attention on the shape of the iceberg. They've fallen for the old 'reduce the world down to separate objects that you can see' trap (although sneakily here they've gone just that little bit beyond to think about the part of the iceberg that is deviously hidden under water and which only fish, whales and submarines can see.)
Some questions (arising out of some fairly basic ideas in systems thinking) that we might useto develop a richer model and therefore a possibly more useful understanding of radicalisation:
Driven by statutory requirement the training was unsurprisingly not hugely inspiring. However, one part of the module did cause me to perk up a little - if for entirely the wrong reason.
The module supposes that:
"One widely held theory is that terrorism, or an act of terrorism, is only the tip of an iceberg. An iceberg only has 10% of its mass above the water and the analogy is that underneath the terrorist attack there is a great deal going on, including the exposure of individuals to influences that drew them into terrorism..."Complete with an interactive picture of the pointy shaped iceberg of everyone's imagination, the trainers argue that people who eventually become terrorists are those with a complaint who move through a process of radicalisation, as if going from the bottom of the iceberg to the top.
There's lots here that's not to like.
Firstly, the 'widely held theory'. Hmmm. Well, its difficult to find evidence of it being very widely held. A few newspaper articles seem to invoke the idea and a couple of academic writers seem to have given a nod to it. Who in practice I wonder holds this theory?
As for it being a theory - well, if a theory is a model of something in the real world and the image of an iceberg is considered to be a model, then yes its a theory. But its a terribly worked theory....Surely these chaps can do better?
Finally, for practical purposes, what does the model as it stands enable us to think about in terms of radicalisation? Not very much that is useful sadly. So it helps us see that the terrorists who commit an offence don't just exist in isolation. Wow. And maybe perhaps we can see each terrorist has a past when they were not terrorists but were perhaps in the process of becoming one. Again, not particularly surprising (though sadly not logically anything to do with icebergs and how they are formed). Beyond that the theory offers nothing.
So the whole iceberg thing is a pleasant distraction for us in the training and gives us a neat short cut to understanding a key point.
Where's the harm in that?
No harm I guess. Its just a bit naff really. And gives theorists and trainers a bad name.
The problem is that they have focused most of their attention on the shape of the iceberg. They've fallen for the old 'reduce the world down to separate objects that you can see' trap (although sneakily here they've gone just that little bit beyond to think about the part of the iceberg that is deviously hidden under water and which only fish, whales and submarines can see.)
Some questions (arising out of some fairly basic ideas in systems thinking) that we might useto develop a richer model and therefore a possibly more useful understanding of radicalisation:
- What is it that makes the iceberg appear to us as a single whole? Where can we draw the boundaries between that which is 'iceberg' and that which we consider 'not iceberg'?
- What relationships do we notice between an isolated iceberg and other icebergs in the same area? Is there some wider 'iceberg grouping' of which the single isolated iceberg might be considered or even experienced to be a part?
- What are the processes through which the iceberg gets formed? How is the iceberg connected to that which is around it over time? And indeed, how might we distinguish between the iceberg as a 'thing' and the ongoing process by which a lump of ice is formed and destroyed in the sea? What is the relationship between form and organisation?
And then perhaps we even ask ourselves about what our way of answering these questions tells us about our way of seeing, framing and thinking?
If we're going to develop an analogy to understand complexities of radicalisation (or indeed, any complex human process) and we're going to look to icebergs (or any other natural phenomena) for inspiration then surely we can do better than treat them merely like lumps of rock? I'm sure ocean scientists (and even icebergs) would appreciate us not denigrating them so much.
