“To live like a tree, lonely and free / To live as brothers like trees in a forest”

About Jeffrey Stevenson Murer

Jeffrey Stevenson Murer is the Lecturer on Collective Violence at the University of St Andrews. He was recently the Principal Investigator of the British Council-funded European Study of Youth Mobilisation, which examined the motivations of young people involved in radical political and social movements.

Articles by Jeffrey Stevenson Murer

Beyond enemy images: politics and the Other – a retrospective

Jeffrey Stevenson Murer 24 May 2013

Jeffrey Stevenson Murer reflects on openSecurity's collection of articles, which have explored the creation of the other as 'enemy', externally and in ourselves.

Toxic images or imaging the other

Jeffrey Stevenson Murer 22 March 2013

In the aftermath of the Toulouse killings of March 2012, the French state projected a set of 'toxic images' clearly demarcating the republic's enemy in young, Muslim men.

Who is the enemy Other?

Jeffrey Stevenson Murer 16 April 2012

In ganging up on housing estates, in racist attacks or inter-state brinkmanship, how does the enemy become the Other? This peculiar purification process requires a narrative and a chance to 'perform a boundary'. For local and national communities, leaders and politicians alike, it is one way to reinforce our own sense of group identity. Is there another way of feeling secure?

Bolts from the blue: method and madness in the West

Jeffrey Stevenson Murer 12 October 2011

The Norwegian massacre and the gun attack on a US congresswoman were both dismissed as the work of deranged loners. But instead of signifying nothing, they were extraordinarily expressive of current political life. The author trawls through a host of supposedly pathological murders in the richest societies of the West to find deep and recurring patterns.

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Europe from the bottom up

A new Europe can only come from the bottom up
Etienne Balibar

Mali: the plot thickens

Remote control war

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Cities in Conflict

Times of hope and despair: lessons of democracy from Gezi resistance
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Syria's war, a new phase

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Brokeback in Belarus

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