Book Review: Conceptualizing Extreme Beliefs and Behaviors. Definitions and Relations

This is the second volume in the Oxford University Press “Extreme Belief and Behavior Series,” of which Prof. Rik Peels (Free University Amsterdam) is the principal editor. The volume, coedited by Prof. John Horgan (Georgia State University), contains 19 chapters in addition to the introduction and epilogue by the editors. The individual chapters were authored or co-authored by 24 scholars (next to the editors themselves), including well-known experts like J.M. Berger, Beatrice de Graaf, Arie Kruglanski and Max Taylor, who seek to clarify one or more of five principal terms—extremism, fanaticism, fundamentalism, radicalisation and terrorism—and their conceptual relations. They do so by exploring how the related beliefs and behaviours have been analysed by scholars who have studied these subjects. In addition, there are two chapters on conspiracy theories (one by M.R.X. Dentith, the other by Joseph Usciniski) and two that focus mainly on ideology (one by Donald Holbrook, the other by Leor Zmigrod and Arie Kruglanski).