Abstract
The events of 9/11 have rekindled interest in the social sciences concerning the global factors responsible for transnational terrorism. Two opposing frameworks currently dominate the scene: proponents of a destructive globalization approach argue that processes related to the transnationalization of capital produce native resistance in the more economically disadvantaged areas of the globe that is manifested as transnational terrorist attacks, especially against the U.S., civilizing globalization arguments point to precisely the opposite effect: economic globalization through the spread of markets and material goods brings with it prosperity and higher living standards, thus defusing the motivation to engage in high-risk political violence. In this paper, I propose an additional framework that goes beyond the narrow realism of the destructive globalization and civilizing globalization perspectives by examining the role of the globalization of world culture in theproduction of anti-u.s. terrorism. I argue that looking at the role of world cultural structuration is important because even though economic globalization may help create local grievances outside of the most economically advantaged areas of the world, cultural globalization provides the requisite models of individual and organizational action and the interpretive schemas that empower local actors with the constitutive capacity to engage in high-risk acts of political violence and allows them to make local/global connections. I test this framework using time-series world-level data in order to examine the global correlates of anti-u.s. terrorist activity for the last 30 years. The results provide mixed support for both civilizing globalization and destructive globalization viewpoints. Further, and in accord with the model proposed here, cultural globalization has a positive effect on the rate of anti-u.s. terrorist activity.
Highlights
The events of 9/11 have rekindled interest in the social sciences concerning the global factors responsible for transnational terrorism
This has become more important given that the salience of transnational terrorism in the global arena has intensified after the end of the cold war, a process that has reached its zenith after the events of 9/11
The analysts that draw on these approaches pay little attention to global structures as important causative factors of the bundle of phenomena usually classified under the heading of transnational terrorism
Summary
Organized terrorist activity produced by transnational sub-state actors and directed at American targets has been a constant feature of the post-war global arena, especially since 1968. I propose a model that views cultural globalization as a factor in facilitating the linkage between the local grievances created by globalizing dynamics and the theorization processes (Strang and Meyer 1993) that allow non-state agents to (a) view themselves as potentially efficacious actors on the global scene and (b) to make the requisite global/local connections that assign specific transnational actors and audiences (such as the U.S or local constituencies.) to their roles in the complex communication structure of the terrorist act This indirect communication feature of terrorist action is best described in Peter Schmid’s definition of terrorism: An anxiety-inspiring method of repeated violent action, employed by (semi-) clandestine individual, group or state actors, for idiosyncratic, criminal or political reasons, whereby—in contrast to assassination—the direct targets of violence are not the main targets.
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