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This article examines the 2016–2017 general strike (hartal or bandh) in Indian-controlled Kashmir, the site of a nearly eighty-year struggle for self-determination. Drawing on twenty-two months of ethnographic fieldwork (2016–2018) conducted in the capital city of Srinagar amid and in the aftermath of the indefinite strike, I show how the strike and the suspension of daily life it entailed was sustained through novel spatiotemporal techniques that coordinated and routinized the actions of the Kashmiri public. Yet sustaining the strike was not only defined by routine and self-restraint. Instead, as the article demonstrates, certain forms of financial labor, too, prolonged the strike—but they did so, counterintuitively, by breaking it. I focus in particular on Kashmiri bank employees, who were at times seen as betraying the strike, but who described their continued work during strike hours as essential for keeping the economy and hence society running. By emphasizing bank employees’ liminal position of breaking the strike while supporting the cause of Kashmiri self-determination, I highlight the labor, sacrifice, and ambivalence that sustain—and threaten to unravel—political mobilizations.

Identity fusion is a visceral sense of \"oneness\" with a group and its individual members that motivates personally costly, pro-group behaviors. Past approaches, most notably social identity theory, have assumed that when people align with groups, the group category eclipses both the personal self and the relationships among individual group members. Also, social identity researchers have focused on intergroup processes. In contrast, fusion theory emphasizes the role of the personal self and intragroup relationships in extreme pro-group action. Strongly fused persons are especially inclined to endorse pro-group action when either the personal or the social self is salient, when physiological arousal is high, or when they perceive that group members share essential qualities (e.g., genes, core values) with one another. Moreover, feelings of personal agency, perceptions of family-like ties to other group members, and a sense of group-related invulnerability mediate the link between identity fusion and pro-group behaviors. All of these effects emerged while controlling for identification, which predicted the effects weakly if at all. By specifying some of the key antecedents of extreme pro-group behavior as well as the role of the personal self and familial ties in such behavior, the identity-fusion approach fills an important explanatory gap left largely unaddressed by earlier perspectives.

Whether upheld as heroic or reviled as terrorism, people have been willing to lay down their lives for the sake of their groups throughout history. Why? Previous theories of extreme self-sacrifice have highlighted a range of seemingly disparate factors, such as collective identity, outgroup hostility, and kin psychology. In this paper, I attempt to integrate many of these factors into a single overarching theory based on several decades of collaborative research with a range of special populations, from tribes in Papua New Guinea to Libyan insurgents and from Muslim fundamentalists in Indonesia to Brazilian football hooligans. These studies suggest that extreme self-sacrifice is motivated by identity fusion, a visceral sense of oneness with the group, resulting from intense collective experiences (e.g., painful rituals or the horrors of frontline combat) or from perceptions of shared biology. In ancient foraging societies, fusion would have enabled warlike bands to stand united despite strong temptations to scatter and flee. The fusion mechanism has often been exploited in cultural rituals, not only by tribal societies but also in specialized cells embedded in armies, cults, and terrorist organizations. With the rise of social complexity and the spread of states and empires, fusion has also been extended to much larger groups, including doctrinal religions, ethnicities, and ideological movements. Explaining extreme self-sacrifice is not only a scientific priority but also a practical challenge as we seek a collective response to suicide, terrorism, and other extreme expressions of outgroup hostility that continue to bedevil humanity today.

In Edith Stein’s thinking, there is a gradual transition from the discovery of Christianity in her phenomenological studies to the mystical realization of her own role as a Christian. The present paper explores the historical, cultural, and personal circumstances of Stein’s approach to Christianity and reveals how philosophical insights contributed to her Christian commitment and supported her receptivity to mysticism. My thesis is that Stein’s philosophical reflection and the deepening of her personal religiosity are mutually evolving. The thesis of this paper is based on a letter written by Edith Stein to Roman Ingarden in 1927, at a time when she had not yet entered the Carmelite Order in Cologne but was already living as a monk. In this sense, the letter represents a zigzag reflection between past and present events, describing events in the apocalyptic horizon of eternity. Through recurrent reflection on the letter, I argue for the parallel development of mystical insights and philosophical achievements in Stein’s life, and finally, I show that the two are inextricably linked and contribute to a philosophical understanding of her own holocaust.

Significance The human propensity to sacrifice one’s life for genetic strangers has puzzled scientists since Darwin. Here, we sought answers to this puzzle by embedding ourselves within groups of individuals prepared to die for one another—Libyan revolutionary battalion members who fought against Gaddafi’s regime in 2011. We found striking evidence of extraordinarily tight, familial-like bonds among those who put themselves directly in harm’s way (i.e., frontline combatants). In fact, for nearly half of combatants, their bonds to each other were stronger than bonds to their own families. Moreover, these kin-like bonds to one another predispose them to extreme self-sacrifice. What motivates ordinary civilians to sacrifice their lives for revolutionary causes? We surveyed 179 Libyan revolutionaries during the 2011 conflict in Libya. These civilians-turned-fighters rejected Gaddafi’s jamahiriyya (state of the masses) and formed highly cohesive fighting units typical of intense conflicts. Fighters reported high levels of “identity fusion”—visceral, family-like bonds between fighters and their battalions. Fusion of revolutionaries with their local battalions and their own families were extremely high, especially relative to Libyans who favored the revolution but did not join battalions. Additionally, frontline combatants were as strongly bonded to their battalion as they were to their own families, but battalion members who provided logistical support were more fused with their families than battalions. Together, these findings help illuminate the social bonds that seem to motivate combatants to risk their lives for the group during wartime.

Sepsis is a life-threatening organ dysfunction caused by the host’s malfunctioning response to infection. Due to its high mortality rate and medical cost, sepsis remains one of the world’s most intractable diseases. In the early stage of sepsis, the over-activated immune system and a cascade of inflammation are usually accompanied by immunosuppression. The core pathogenesis of sepsis is the maladjustment of the host’s innate and adaptive immune response. Many immune cells are involved in this process, including neutrophils, mononuclear/macrophages and lymphocytes. The immune cells recognize pathogens, devour pathogens and release cytokines to recruit or activate other cells in direct or indirect manner. Pyroptosis, immune cell-extracellular traps formation and autophagy are several novel forms of cell death that are different from apoptosis, which play essential roles in the progress of sepsis. Immune cells can initiate “self-sacrifice” through the above three forms of cell death to protect or kill pathogens. However, the exact roles and mechanisms of the self-sacrifice in the immune cells in sepsis are not fully elucidated. This paper mainly analyzes the self-sacrifice of several representative immune cells in the forms of pyroptosis, immune cell-extracellular traps formation and autophagy to reveal the specific roles they play in the occurrence and progression of sepsis, also to provide inspiration and references for further investigation of the roles and mechanisms of self-sacrifice of immune cells in the sepsis in the future, meanwhile, through this work, we hope to bring inspiration to clinical work.

This book argues that guilt, shame, and remorse, associated with a history of substance abuse, explain why a minority of Islamist extremists carried out suicide terrorism in Europe between 2001 and 2018. Since 9/11, Islamist terrorism has dominated the European security landscape, but there has been little systematic analysis of either the attacks or the men responsible. This book addresses that gap, drawing on terrorist discourse, court transcripts, elite interviews, government reports, and three years of ethnography to provide an exhaustive account of how and why Islamist terrorism has occurred in Europe. Making a detailed analysis of 48 terrorist attacks carried out by 80 suicide terrorists, the book introduces two new theories. The first argues that most of these men first engaged in Islamist extremism as an alternative to substance abuse. The second contends that, following a five-stage process of radicalisation, cognitive dissonance triggered guilt, shame, and remorse over previous misconduct. From this emotional distress, suicide terrorism emerged as a rational choice ahead of either suicide or a return to active addiction. This book argues that the root cause of suicide terrorism in Europe is not so much politics or religion but is more about personal crisis and a search for redemption. This book will be of great interest to students of terrorism/counterterrorism, de-radicalisation, political Islam, and security studies in general.