Counter-terrorism Discourse Research Articles

‘Who would go to Egypt?’ How tourism accounts for ‘terrorism’

AbstractThis article examines the tension between British and Egyptian counterterrorism discourses and Western tourism industry discourses. I analyse how guidebooks like theRough GuideandLonely Planetattract tourists by representing Egypt as an appealing tourist destination in a way that accounts for its positioning, in counterterrorism discourses, as a location and source of terrorism. They do so by producing ‘risk’ in a very specific way. Guidebook representations construct one extreme of Egyptian society as ‘bad’ Muslims who pose an essential threat to Western tourists and their inherently progressive liberal democratic values. Having defined risk in this way, guidebooks justify the production of ‘states of exception’ and ‘exceptional states’ that exclude ‘bad’ Muslims and protect Western tourists. These strategies function together to construct Egypt as non-threatening and appealing to tourists. I argue that guidebooks not only account for terrorism but represent Egypt in a way that largely reinforces British and Egyptian ‘war on terror’ strategies. These strategies similarly protect subjects and spaces that uphold Western liberal democratic values. This article highlights the constitutive role of tourism in international politics and simultaneously helps us better understand the complex and mundane means by which the current Western liberal order is (re)produced.

UK News Media Discourses of Surveillance

This article examines the findings of a discursive analysis of UK newspapers to determine how practices of surveillance are represented. Drawing upon Deleuze and Guattari, the article argues for the importance of examining the linguistic and enunciative components of surveillant assemblages. The article shows how representations of surveillance practices in the UK media are split between two evaluative schemas. One is a discourse of appropriate surveillance, which draws upon discourses of crime prevention, counterterrorism, and national security. The second is a discourse of inappropriate surveillance that draws upon discourses of privacy, Big Brother, and personal liberty.

Security for sale! The visual rhetoric of marketing counter-terrorism technologies

ABSTRACT While much is written on government, legal and media discourses of security and counter-terrorism, very few studies turn a critical eye towards 'mediation' as it applies to the marketing of counter-terrorism technologies. Counter-terrorism technologies include everything from surveillance cameras to biometric scanners, data protection software to perimeter-security fencing. Together they comprise one of the largest, most profitable product sectors in the global economy. In this article I look at the visual corporate communication strategies used to market counter-terrorism technologies to both governments and the private sector. I use a dual method approach to perform this investigation. First, I conduct a visual analysis of promotional material produced by counter-terrorism technology manufacturers including product brochures and advertisements in defence magazines. Second, I draw from participant-observation research carried out over the past three years at counter-terrorism expos. This research offers insight into how discourses around security and counter-terrorism are shaped not only through government and military PR (as it is often spread through the mass media), but also by defence technology manufacturers and marketers ranging from major security conglomerates such as Group4Securicor and Magal Security Systems, to telecommunication giants including AT&T and IBM.

Labelling the innocent: how government counter-terrorism advice creates labels that contribute to the problem

The Labour government's counter-terrorism advice sought to distance ‘terrorism’ from Islam, but in doing so actually created an imagined relationship that potentially alienates those who follow the Islamic faith. This study works within the framework of labelling theory to demonstrate that the state's counter-terrorism advice was detrimental to its own goals. The study identifies labels within counter-terrorism discourse and argues that these create ‘the Islamic community’ using shared labels found in Islamist discourse and places the ‘threat’ within this imagined community. Identifying with a singular ‘other’ denies participation in multiple groups, creating an insular imagined society that constructs barriers and encourages persecution. Placing the ‘terrorist’ within this larger isolated community increases the possibility that the badge of honour found within its own group is seen as a status symbol to be mirrored within the wider community. Removing labels and empowering the individual, rather than creating artificial collectives, could provide a means of addressing the problem.

The failure of a liberal peace: Sri Lanka's counter-insurgency in global perspective

The victory by the Sri Lankan government over the LTTE in 2009 apparently ended over 25 years of civil war. However, the ramifications of the government's counter-insurgency go far beyond Sri Lanka's domestic politics. The military campaign against the LTTE poses a significant challenge to many of the liberal norms that inform contemporary models of international peace-building—the so-called ‘liberal peace’. This article suggests that Sri Lanka's attempts to justify a shift from peaceful conflict resolution to counter-insurgency relied on three main factors: the flawed nature of the peace process, which highlighted wider concerns about the mechanisms and principles of international peace processes; the increased influence of ‘Rising Powers’, particularly China, in global governance mechanisms, and their impact on international norms related to conflict management; and the use by the government of a discourse of counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency to limit international censure. The article concludes that the Sri Lankan case may suggest a growing contestation of international peace-building norms, and the emergence of a legitimated ‘illiberal peace’.

Terrorism and risk management

Throughout the past few decades, Israel has developed a set of legal, criminal justice and other law enforcement initiatives under the broad category of 'counter-terrorism policy'. This policy attempts both to separate and manage more effectively a group of suspected and accused terrorists. This article utilizes the New Penology perspective to trace the ways in which notions of risk and dangerousness are embedded in the counter-terrorism discourse and practices developed in Israel. Additionally, this article analyzes various initiatives and, in particular, laws and the institutional mechanism that administrate the management of risk posed by terrorist groups. Our analysis reveals how such initiatives and their enforcement are legitimized and grounded in a single discourse embedded with the socially and politically constructed notions of 'dangerousness', 'risk assessment' and 'security'.

Sacrificial Bodies: Terrorism, Counter-Terrorism, Torture

In this paper, I illuminate the underlying demonology of religious terrorism. I argue that counter-terrorist practices mirror the demonology that they are designed to resist. This argument focuses on our system of detention and torture. I suggest that the terrorism–counter-terrorism discourse relies on sacrificial bodies: the bombed body, and the tortured body. To find a creative response to terrorism, and to restore human rights, we need an alternate narrative for global violence. I suggest that this alternate narrative exists. I trace it through citizen resistance and a case study.

‘There were collisions and explosions. The world was no longer calm.’ Terror and precarious life in Salman Rushdie's Shalimar the Clown

Rushdie’s recent call for the reformation of Islam may appear – however unwittingly – to correspond with contemporary discourses of counter-terrorism, which have clearly articulated the war against terrorism and the struggle for global security to the control of immigration, as well as the criminalisation of Islam. As A. Sivanandan has argued in ‘Race, terror and civil society’, ‘the war on asylum and the war on terror […] have converged to produce a racism which cannot tell a settler from an immigrant, an immigrant from an asylum speaker, an asylum speaker from a Muslim, a Muslim from a terrorist’. In the context of this conflation of counter-terrorism and the state regulation of migrant populations, what is at stake in Salman Rushdie’s call for a reformation of Islam in response to the July 7th bombings? As a middle-class migrant writer, who is often associated with a western liberal ideology, and a secular Muslim, who was also the victim of the death sentence issued by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989, Rushdie occupies an ambivalent position in relation to the convergence of the war on asylum and the war on terror described by Sivanandan. But how is this ambivalence registered in Rushdie’s Shalimar the Clown, a novel that was published at the same time as Rushdie’s call for a reformation of Islam? This article seeks to address this question by examining how Rushdie explodes the conventions of national allegory that he established in Midnight’s Children and Shame to represent the conflict in Kashmir, and its place in contemporary geopolitics.

Terrorism, Orientalism and Imperialism

This essay argues that there are striking parallels between what Edward Said called orientalism and the dominant discourse of counter-terrorism underpinning the war on terrorism. Beginning with a discussion of the contribution that postcolonial thinkers such as Edward Said, Achille Mbembe, Paul Gilroy and Gayatri Spivak have made to understanding the imperialist determinants of the discourse of terrorism, the essay proceeds to examine how the orientalist stereotype of the anti-colonial insurgent is interrogated in Sahar Khalifeh's novel Wild Thorns and Yasmina Khadra's novel The Attack.

An analysis of EU counterterrorism discourse post-September 11

This article examines the main characteristics and evolution of European Union counterterrorism discourse, primarily through a comparison with United States counterterrorism discourse since September 11. It argues that while both actors share a great deal in common in the language they employ about terrorism, there are a number of subtle but highly significant differences. The article also argues that there have been a number of important evolutions in the discourse of EU officials over the past five years. The article concludes that the nature and construction of official EU terrorism discourse has a number of important analytical, normative and practical implications, not least because it rests upon a series of highly contested assumptions and narratives about the nature and causes of the terrorist threat.

Constructing Enemies: ‘Islamic Terrorism’ in Political and Academic Discourse

AbstractThe term ‘Islamic terrorism’ has become a ubiquitous feature of Western political and academic counter-terrorism discourse in recent years. Examining over 300 political and academic texts and employing a discourse analytic approach, this article attempts to describe and dissect the central terms, assumptions, labels, narratives and genealogical roots of the language and knowledge of ‘Islamic terrorism’ and to reflect on its practical and normative consequences. It concludes that for the most part, political and academic discourses of ‘Islamic terrorism’ are unhelpful, not least because they are highly politicized, intellectually contestable, damaging to community relations and practically counter-productive.

Queer Times, Queer Assemblages

Research Article| December 01 2005 Queer Times, Queer Assemblages Jasbir K. Puar Jasbir K. Puar Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Social Text (2005) 23 (3-4 (84-85)): 121–139. https://doi.org/10.1215/01642472-23-3-4_84-85-121 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Jasbir K. Puar; Queer Times, Queer Assemblages. Social Text 1 December 2005; 23 (3-4 (84-85)): 121–139. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/01642472-23-3-4_84-85-121 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter Books & JournalsAll JournalsSocial Text Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Duke University Press2005 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: Articles You do not currently have access to this content.