Ephemeral Utopia: Aesthetics of the Self and the Community on the Syrian Journey

This article challenges linear accounts of jihadist radicalisation by examining the motivations of European migrants to Syria through Karl Mannheim’s concept of ‘utopian surge’. Drawing on sociology-of-knowledge methods, Esmili and Sakhi show that commitment to jihad functions as an existential moral project — a realisation of the self in the here and now — shaped by communal aesthetics and shared ideals whose historical unravelling then drives disengagement. A landmark contribution to the ethnography of violent extremism.