Critical realism and historical materialism as resources for critical terrorism studies

Abstract

Critical Terrorism Studies can be strengthened by scholarship that draws on a combination of critical realism (CR) and historical materialism (HM). CR relates epistemological relativism (we can know the social only indirectly through our interpretation of it) to ontological realism (there is a powerfully influential social reality that includes but is much more than our knowledge claims about it) through judgemental rationalism (knowledge claims can be tested against social reality, although always in an indirect, interpreted and fallible way). We illustrate CR-informed HM's value in relation to analysing capitalism's constant remaking of the world, terrorism as an instrument of capitalist class rule and the reified thinking involved in the use of terrorism that it is inherently anti-emancipatory.