Chapter 2: Rethinking Radicalisation: A Critical Review of Research on Belief, Polarisation, and Relational Harm

To understand what QAnon has done and continues to do to relationships, we start here with the research that has shaped how belief and extremity are understood. Much of this work explains why people adopt extreme views or what makes them vulnerable. However, far less scholarship explores what happens next and when belief enters homes, changes families, and erodes trust. This chapter lays the conceptual ground for the book’s wider purpose which is to demonstrate how radicalisation is not only ideological but also relational, and that its consequences must be understood through the social ties that it disrupts.

The chapter develops the foundation introduced in the introduction, expanding on how radicalisation, polarisation, and conspiracism have been studied and where these approaches currently fall short. It argues that existing research has been preoccupied with antecedents and individual psychology while neglecting aftermath and relational consequence. The review shows why radicalisation should be studied not only as an individual process but also as something that moves through relationships. These gaps create the space for a relational sociology of radicalisation which is an approach that recognises how belief is both produced and felt through bonds of care, loyalty, and trust.