T. K. Wilson. Killing Strangers: How Political Violence Became Modern.

Abstract

In Killing Strangers: How Political Violence Became Modern, T. K. Wilson observes that “one of the key features of the modern political cosmos … is that the threat of assassination has democratized radically: and in doing so become impersonal” (129). Although “powerful individuals still remain the targets of violence” in today’s world, what Wilson sets out to explain is how so-called “little people,” or “those (formerly) of no account,” are now often among those targeted by individuals who practice “political violence” (129). In this book, that rubric is formally defined as “unofficial or rebel violence” (111). But the ways in which Wilson describes such violence would seem to conform to what most people would generally recognize as acts of “terrorism.” In directing analytical focus toward this type of violence, his book departs from much of the voluminous literature produced during the past decade and a half on other forms of political violence, much of it written by social scientists, which deals with a much more wide-ranging set of violent contexts and practices, including civil war, insurgency, ethnic cleansing, and genocide, among others.