Grievance-Fueled Violence: Conceptual and Empirical Developments

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Background

Acts of extreme or mass violence perpetrated by lone individuals have become increasingly common in liberal democracies over the past 20 years. Despite the enduring concerns regarding violent extremism, the perpetrators of these incidents show a lack of demographic, ideological, or psychological profiles. Some of these acts have been described as politically motivated terrorism, whilst others were attributed to mental illness or criminal intent. However, there is an increasingly common view that the distinction between political ideology, criminal intent, and personal motivations is often blurred, and that the violence carried out by these individuals is better understood using the broader concept of grievance-fuelled violence. Grievance-fuelled violence is not just a theoretical construct. Multi-agency teams of specialist police and mental health clinicians have been established in Australia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom to help mitigate the threat presented by lone individuals with complex grievances.

This Research Topic will address the problem of grievance-fuelled violence. Traditionally, individuals who either threaten to or conduct, large-scale acts of violence without help and support from a wider group have been categorized based on their espoused grievance. This has led to the development of distinct research and practice areas focusing on either terrorism, mass murder, fixation, stalking, or familial and intimate partner homicide. This tendency towards labeling offender types based on espoused grievance or the context for violence suffers from attributional flaws, including, but not limited to, the classification of offenders, which affect the reliability, validity, and applicability of the research outcomes for effective practice. However, with an ever-expanding theoretical and empirical evidence base, academics and practitioners are starting to question whether these groups of individuals are in fact distinct and whether their behavior can be understood in a consistent way. This Research Topic, therefore, seeks to bring these distinct research areas together with a goal of consolidating current research that expands both knowledge and practice in the area of grievance-fueled violence.

Although specialist practice in this area has developed rapidly over the past decade, there is considerable scope for conceptual and empirical research that can support and enhance responses to grievance-fuelled violence. This Research Topic aims to collect original research articles, systematic reviews, review and perspective articles, policy and practice reviews, and community case studies to support this aim. Articles that will be considered that fit within the scope of the definition of Grievance-fuelled violence. Currently, concepts that fit within this scope include terrorism and extremism, mass murder, violence in the workplace or educational settings, stalking, familial and intimate partner homicide, and fixation. The Topic welcomes submissions regarding other forms of violence if they are coherently associated with the concept of grievance-fuelled violence.

Keywords: Grievance, Violence, Mental Health, Security

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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