Restorative practices for preventing/countering violent extremism: an affective-discursive examination of extreme emotional incidents

Abstract

Schools worldwide are increasingly enmeshed in discourses of securitisation. Efforts to prevent or counter violent extremism (P/CVE) are a manifestation of this. P/CVE in education takes various forms; the pilot explored here is considered super-soft in that no mention was made of violent extremism. Attention was given to schools’ capacities to enhance social cohesion through Restorative Practices (RP) – a method for building social capital. We use an affective-discursive lens to explore how affects/emotions are caught in a dispositif of governance fundamental to efforts to regulate youth through this method. Specifically, we focus on extreme emotional incidents that highlight norms and practices in which violence and emotions are entangled, which expose limits and implications of RPs. While holding promise for transcending punitive disciplinary methods, we argue that RPs rely on logics that limit how violence is understood, locating violent problems within the problem bodies of marginalised youth.

Keywords:

• Countering preventing violent extremism
• affect
• discursive-affective analytic
• securitisation
• education

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the participants for their involvement in this study. We acknowledge that this research was undertaken on the unceded lands of First Peoples. We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of these lands and pay our respects to Elders past and present.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 As a cautionary illustration, of the 2,500 referrals to UK Channel practitioners between 2007-2012, over 90% were for Muslim individuals (Coppock 2014) and 80% of these referrals were ultimately rejected (O’Donnell 2016). Lack of clarity in government advice to schools has led to over-reporting fuelled by confusion and misunderstanding that has bred alienation (Harris-Hogan, Barrelle, and Smith 2019; Winter & Mills, 2020).

2 Notably, the $18m Schools Security Programme (Commonwealth of Australia, 2018).

3 All names have been changed.

4 In Australia ‘public’ schools are open to all and publicly funded.

5 We invert steps one and two given the way in which identifying ‘patently’ emotional incidents provides a ready starting point.

Additional information

Funding

We would also like to thank the University of South Australia for funding this research project and providing ethical approval (application number 202318), as well as support provided by the Centre for Research in Educational and Social Inclusion (CRESI), University of South Australia.