I went down yesterday to the Piraeus with Glaucon the son of Ariston, that I might offer up my prayers to the goddess; and also because I wanted to see in what manner they would celebrate the festival, which was a new thing. I was delighted with the procession of the inhabitants; but that of the Thracians was equally, if not more, beautiful. When we had finished our prayers and viewed the spectacle, we turned in the direction of the city; and at that instant Polemarchus, the son of Cephalus, chanced to catch sight of us from a distance as we were starting on our way home, and told his servant to run and bid us wait for him. The servant took hold of me by the cloak behind, and said, Polemarchus desires you to wait.

The Republic That Was

Mampilly provides a sophisticated and challenging approach to thinking about how rebel groups govern their territories, and the implications of this process. The book comprises three conceptual cha...

Rebel rulers: insurgent governance and civilian life during war

Qualitative research has increased in popularity among social scientists. While substantial attention has been given to various methods of qualitative analysis, there is a need to focus on strategies for collecting diverse forms of qualitative data. In this article, the authors discuss four sources of qualitative data: participant observation, interviews, physical data, and electronic data. Although counseling psychology researchers often use interviewing, participant observation and physical and electronic data are also beneficial ways of collecting qualitative data that have been underutilized.

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The Pond You Fish In Determines the Fish You Catch: Exploring Strategies for Qualitative Data Collection

The publication of The ISIS Apocalypse coincides with an intensification of interest in Islamic State (ISIS) due to its perceived successes. A wide range of conflicting views – and a lack of unders...

The ISIS apocalypse: the history, strategy, and doomsday vision of the Islamic State

Why do insurgent groups that are otherwise similar in ideology, ethnicity, state enemy, and resource flows often have such different organisational structures and develop so differently? In Network...

Networks of Rebellion: Explaining Insurgent Cohesion and Collapse

Jihadi Culture: The Art and Social Practices of Militant Islamists

A Guide to Imagework is a pioneering guide to a new trend in ethnographic research: the use of imaginative, experiential methods such as dreamwork, artwork, Gestalt theory, and psychodrama. Originating in group counselling and psychiatric therapy, imagework techniques explore subjects' imaginative resources to reveal unconscious knowledge about identity, belief and society. They are ideal for accessing rich qualitative data about how individuals and cultures function.
Iain Edgar, a leading specialist on ethnographic method, has condensed top-level research theory on imagework into this handy practical manual. Complete with case studies and examples, hands-on tips, and guidance on methods and ethics, this new book is an ideal starting point for any imagework project.

A Guide to Imagework: Imagination-Based Research Methods

Existing alongside the traditional forms of qualitative social science research, there is a set of potential research methods that derive from experiential groupwork and the humanistic human potential movement and are only slightly used by researchers. Social science research has barely begun to use these powerful strategies that were developed originally for personal and group change but that are potentially applicable to the research domain. This article will locate these methods within the qualitative research domain and propose a novel view of their value. The study of the actual and potential use of one of these methods, imagework, will be the particular focus of this article. References to the use of artwork, sculpting, psychodrama, gestalt, and dreamwork will also be made. The hypothesis underpinning the author’s approach is that experiential research methods such as imagework can elicit implicit knowledge and self-identities of respondents in a way that other methods cannot.

The Imagework Method in Health and Social Science Research

The intention of this paper is to consider and evaluate the hypothesis that Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, was inspired and guided by true night dreams (al-Ruya) to found and lead the Taliban revolution in the 1990s in Afghanistan. The paper contains small excerpts from an interview with Ramimullah Yusufzai, the well-respected British Broadcasting Corporation journalist in Peshawar, Pakistan, which offers first-hand evidence that Omar's charismatic leadership was founded on his commanders' and followers' belief in his divine guidance through night dreams. Such a belief in true dreams, commonplace throughout Islam, is based on the example of the Prophet Mohammed who is reported to have dreamt parts of the Koran. 1 Thus the paper begins by outlining the Islamic metaphysical and epistemological context that facilitates Muslim belief in true dreams.

The ‘true dream’ in contemporary Islamic/Jihadist dreamwork: a case study of the dreams of Taliban leader Mullah Omar

Al-Qaeda and Taliban leadership and membership appear to have been motivated, inspired, and guided by certain dreams. Their understanding of dreams seems to draw at least partly on traditional and contemporary Islamic dream theories. If this hypothesis is correct, then there is a need for the urgent study of Islamic Jihadist political/religious conversion and guidance dreams across the Middle East. The dream—as experienced, reported, and interpreted—is now a significant aspect of the global conflict between Al-Qaeda and its associates versus the core value system of Western civilization.

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Iain R. Edgar

Papers

Jihadi Culture: The Art and Social Practices of Militant Islamists

A Guide to Imagework: Imagination-Based Research Methods

The Imagework Method in Health and Social Science Research

The ‘true dream’ in contemporary Islamic/Jihadist dreamwork: a case study of the dreams of Taliban leader Mullah Omar

The Dream Will Tell: Militant Muslim Dreaming in the Context of Traditional and Contemporary Islamic Dream Theory and Practice