Jihadi solidarity forms a global peer-to-peer niche replacing older territorial traditions.

Evidence

Explaining how devoted actors come to sacrifice for cause and comrades not only is a scientific goal but a practical imperative to address intergroup disputes that can spiral out of control in a rapidly interconnecting world of collapsing and conflicting cultural traditions. From the recent massive media-driven global political awakening, horizontal peer-to-peer transcultural niches, geographically disconnected, are emerging to replace vertical generation-to-generation territorial traditions. Devoted actors of the global jihadi archipelago militate within such a novel transcultural niche, which is socially tight, ideationally narrow, and globe spanning. Nevertheless, its evolutionary maintenance depends on costly commitments to transcendental values, rituals and sacrifices, and parochial altruism, which may have deep roots even in the earliest and most traditional human societies. — Scott Atran, The Devoted Actor, 1

Categorization

• XREF: Directly speaks to the reader’s question about solidarity sustained by a constructed enemy: here the niche is ‘socially tight, ideationally narrow’ via peer-to-peer transmission rather than primordial inheritance — a manufactured-transmission model. — connects to: State-neglected Muslim youth adopt jihad as a noble global cause — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 768; The Afghan war transformed scattered Islamist outlaws into a global movement; Islamist groups are locally shaped and resist homogenizing categorization (+1 more)
• SEED: Angle for an essay: the modern terrorist network as proof that group solidarity no longer needs territory, blood, or vertical tradition — a horizontally transmitted, tight, globe-spanning niche.

Related

• State-neglected Muslim youth adopt jihad as a noble global cause (similarity 0.80)
• Ideological movements can mobilize global volunteers and territory far beyond material resources (similarity 0.79)
• Islamist groups are locally shaped and resist homogenizing categorization (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• State-neglected Muslim youth adopt jihad as a noble global cause #expands (0.82) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 768
• Pan-Islamic solidarity overrode intra-Muslim sectarian and political divides #corroborates (0.80)
• Islamist groups are locally shaped and resist homogenizing categorization #complicates (0.78)
• The Afghan war transformed scattered Islamist outlaws into a global movement #complicates (0.75)