Researching Incels - Emerald Points by Stu Lucy & Frazer Heritage & Lisa Sugiura Hardcover

About the Book

As the world wakes up to the incel problem, many examples of research into incels over the past decade have been poorly conducted. Researching Incels is a crucial intervention into problematic incel research - calling for a new framework for rigorous, responsible research to inform policy on the incel crisis.

Book Synopsis

As the world wakes up to the incel problem following Netflix's Adolescence, many examples of research into incels over the past decade have been poorly conducted. Researching Incels is a crucial intervention into problematic incel research - calling for a new framework for rigorous, responsible research to inform policy on the incel crisis.

A critical overview on poor research examples using the primary case study of a report commissioned by the UK Government's Commission for Countering Extremism on predicting harm among involuntary celibates, the authors outline incel research that is methodologically flawed, unreliable, and normalizes misogyny. Focusing primarily on two critical flaws of researching incels - limited conceptualization leading to poor methodology; and positionality; they write from a feminist positioned critical analysis to offer a blueprint for the future of robust incel research in response to these limitations. This rebuttal is situated at the forefront of current polarizing debates developing within the incel community - emphasizing that incel research must address from a feminist perspective the underlying structural processes and ideologies that give authority and motivation to communities such as incels.

A "how to" guide for future research, Researching Incels also provides guidance for research, practice and policy on how to approach and assess existing work, with explicit caution where research is characterized by the limitations outlined here. Breaking new ground as the first broad commentary on researching incels, this is an essential roadmap for "Season Two" of incel research.

Review Quotes

As the threat of misogynistic incel violence becomes an increasingly pressing social issue, Researching Incels - A Critical Feminist Intervention shows how research in this field can be undertaken with methodological care, theoretical clarity, and conceptual nuance. Sensitive, insightful, and comprehensive, it offers both a sophisticated account of incel ideology and a practical roadmap for conducting ethically responsible and intellectually rigorous scholarship.

This book offers a timely and much needed critique of evolutionary psychological approaches to researching the incel community. While interdisciplinarity is to be welcomed in incel scholarship, it is a matter of considerable concern that theories and ideas from evolutionary psychology form the basis of most incel and manosphere ideas about women, men and the relationships between them. The authors of Researching Incels draw attention to the way in which biological essentialism not only ignores the cultural and social construction of gender, but is also unapologetically and emphatically heteronormative and dualistic. Perhaps most importantly, their detailed critique demonstrates that, while evolutionary psychology is an arm of a historically positivist and thus apparently 'objective' science, it is in fact value laden. Researching Incels makes a hugely significant contribution to incel scholarship, and should serve as a reminder to policy makers that framing matters.

Through an exhaustive and cross-disciplinary analysis of the last ten years of research on incels, Lucy, Heritage, and Sugiura have produced a guiding framework for meaningful and robust research on the misogynist community. Researching Incels provides a much-needed feminist intervention in the field, and is sure to be the definitive reference for new and experienced researchers, policymakers, and the public.

About the Author

Stu Lucy is an ESRC funded postdoctoral researcher at the University of Portsmouth, UK.

Frazer Heritage is Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK.

Lisa Sugiura is Professor in Cybercrime and Gender at the University of Portsmouth, UK.