Terrorism Studies Research Articles

Terrorism as an aesthetic signifier: The afterlives of terrorism discourse in Western reactions to wartime suffering

Abstract What are the legacies of the war on terror? This paper seeks to answer this question through an analysis of vernacular uses of terrorism discourse in political commentary on the Ukraine war. The paper describes how the set of tropes, ideas, and recurrent metaphors that constituted the historical backbone of narratives about terrorism before and after 9/11 is now being mobilised in the context of interstate conflict. Instead of rejecting such deployments of terrorism as lay misappropriations of an otherwise-objective concept, we argue that they evidence the aesthetic force of terrorism discourse in organising our ethical relationship to different experiences of (in)human suffering. The paper advances the concept of terrorism as an aesthetic signifier, to provide two contributions to terrorism studies. First, we argue that narrative approaches to the study of political violence in IR can only move forward if they bypass the field’s traditional framing of terrorism – which we dub the (il)legitimacy trap – and push the boundaries of critique beyond the idea of terrorism as unacceptable violence. Second, we contend that IR scholars must situate the signifiers orbiting the discourse on terror within wider racialised aesthetic regimes dictating the visibility and invisibility of collective suffering. With these two moves, we hope to bring more attention to the question of victimisation in terrorism studies, a field historically focused on perpetrators and the conditions of perpetration of violence.

An Analytical Theoretical Study of Terrorism According to the Social Action Theory of ‘Talcott Parsons’ as an Instance of Sociological Theories

The main focus of sociology is presenting the social life of people and their behaviours, whether in groups or societies. Sociology, usually, is defined as a field of research which studies the social interaction between people and their behaviours. Thus the sociological theories and scholars have given great importance to social action concept. In this study, which is an extract from a PhD dissertation, the terrorism has analysed sociologically according to the Talcott Parsons’ theory of social action. Since terrorism is one of the common social phenomena around the world, it has various factors and reasons that vary according to the communities’ nature of life. Terrorism, also, is a concept which used for any violent acts committed by an organization, an individual or a group. It has been experienced by humanity in many different ways throughout different eras. Therefore this study has tried to determine a theoretical framework for analysing and reviewing this phenomenon besides talking about it according to the reality of society and its most important causes and effects on the life of society and individuals. Because the Parsons’ theory serves the study aims and gives us the opportunity of conducting and analysing the study in a more detailed approach, it has been utilised for the current study. The main aim of the study is to analyse the phenomenon of terrorism from the perspective of “Talcott Parsons' theory of social action as a sociological theory”.

“No punishment is enough for monsters”: vindictiveness as an important political emotion in dealing with Belgian (potential) returnee men

ABSTRACT Building on the call to further integrate emotions in critical security and terrorism studies, we explore the ways emotions figure in media discourses and shape responses and policies on the returnee question. Through critical discourse analysis and thick description, we show how Belgian (potential) returnee men were subject to varying securitising discourses and emotional portrayals in media coverage over the past decade. Our argument contends that media discourse(s) on the returnee question exhibit a complex emotional landscape. We discern dominant, alternative and rising emotions that undergird the media coverage. We will illustrate how the “dominant” emotion of fear oscillated with an “alternative” emotion of vulnerability and, over the course of a decade, was accompanied by a “rising” emotion of vindictiveness. We argue that the cultivation of vindictiveness contributes to securitising narratives that portray Belgian (potential) returnee men as irredeemable monsters deserving of extreme punishments. This rising discourse undermines democratic principles and the rule of law. We speak of political emotions because emotions are deeply intertwined with power dynamics, societal structures, and political processes, which shape collective attitudes, behaviours, and policies towards (potential) returnees.

Editors’ Introduction: Decoloniality, criticality, and abolition - can Critical Terrorism Studies remain “critical”?

Editors’ Introduction: Decoloniality, criticality, and abolition - can Critical Terrorism Studies remain “critical”?

Against the depoliticisation of Palestinian female shahids

Palestinian women’s engagement with politics and their appropriation of conventionally masculine acts of martyrdom during the Second Intifada (2002–2005) have been subject to intense public debate, media scrutiny and contested cultural representations. This article, drawing on studies of terrorism as well as translation theory, examines first-hand accounts of acts of martyrdom by Palestinian women, which uphold Palestinian national and religious discourses of sacrifice. Failing to grapple with how and why Palestinians recognise these women’s acts as martyrdom, many Euro-American and Israeli scholars focus on personal, social and psychological motivations. While many Euro-American and Israeli scholars construct Palestinian female martyrs as socially deviant, we develop a different framework to understand female martyrdom on more local terms that resonate with Palestinians’ lived experience. We introduce five Palestinian female martyrs’ video testimonies that scholarship to date has overlooked. We contend that Palestinian female martyrs (shahids) are conscious agents whose final acts underscore their adherence to religious and national discourses of sacrifice.

Dying to bankrupt: the effect of suicide terrorism on foreign direct investment

ABSTRACT Why do terrorist groups perpetrate suicide attacks? Political scientists maintain that terrorist groups adopt suicide terrorism for its strategic benefits. Yet previous studies have not demonstrated that suicide terrorism outperforms conventional terrorism. In fact, the most prominent studies do not even systematically compare the strategic effects of suicide terrorism to conventional terrorism to justify the cost. To date, the presumed strategic utility of suicide terrorism remains elusive. Although economists have assessed the impact of terrorism broadly on various economic measures, our study is the first to rigorously compare the effects of suicide terrorism to conventional terrorism on foreign direct investment. Consistent with bargaining theory, we find robust evidence that suicide terrorism “works” by depressing more than conventional attacks FDI in the target country. This effect is strong across PCSE model specifications, particularly in target countries weaker at counterterrorism. The study has important implications for both terrorism studies and international business.

Fifty Shades of Deprivation: Disaggregating Types of Economic Disadvantage in Studies of Terrorism

Fifty Shades of Deprivation: Disaggregating Types of Economic Disadvantage in Studies of Terrorism

Resilient non-radicalisers: beating the odds through non-radicalisation despite significant suffering

ABSTRACT This study explores how and why some individuals are resilient to radicalisation by focusing on individuals who were labelled “terrorists” for their alleged involvement or support for an attempted coup that took place in Turkey on 15 July 2016, yet who have shown no sign of violent radicalisation since. Drawing from 15 interviews, it assesses both the potential radicalisation risk factors that the participants display, such as political persecution, imprisonment, torture, social pressure and forced migration. Then, it explores participants’ explanation for why they have not become radicalised, including the role of the Hizmet doctrine, their religious adherence, individual personality traits and resources (e.g. social capital) through a socioecological framework. While terrorism studies have focused extensively on pathways towards radicalisation and countering radicalisation, this study contributes to a small body of research to explore the notion of “non-radicalisation”, informing the literature on resilience and protective factors towards larger populations.

Instrumentalising race: why critical terrorism studies continues to have a race problem

ABSTRACT This paper interrogates how the racial logic of instrumentalisation – the intended exploitation of racialised peoples for intellectual capital – shapes the field of Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS). I argue that the problem of instrumentalisation highlights CTS’s limitations to advance anti-racism because of how it standardises non-racist (rather than anti-racist) logic and practices in academia. Adopting a postcolonial perspective inspired by Frantz Fanon and Robbie Shilliam, this paper discusses the problem of CTS furthering the structural issue that is counterterrorism policymaking spaces privileging “white faces” rather than engaging knowledge production practices that are more cognisant of the relational attributes of ontology. This distinction of “rather than” is argued to be an important emphasis in how this distinction challenges the quality of criticality within CTS if CTS cannot meet its core commitments in the context of anti-racism. The aim of pursuing this evaluation is not to replace white faces with non-white representations by way of calling for diversity in the CTS professoriate. The focus of this critique of CTS is instead to explain why CTS scholars should re-examine their philosophical commitments and knowledge relations to evaluate how they can better demonstrate intellectual generosity and allyship in service to anti-racist intellectual traditions.

A Tale of Terror: Autoethnography and the Study of Terrorism

ABSTRACT Although terrorism is the only form of violence named after an emotion, terror, there appears to be negligible attention paid to comprehending and analysing this core emotion. Due in large part to the unique subjective factors of terror, there is immense difficulty in quantifying the emotion. Similarly, attempts to qualify emotions using qualitative methodologies are underexplored. This paper presents autoethnography as a legitimate, viable, and ethical research method for the study of terror in terrorism. The author advances a first person account of the experience of terror from a recognised terrorist attack in Istanbul in 2016. The intention is to provide a starting point for understanding the emotional complexities of terror, its unique qualities, and the inherent problems of researching and analysing such an emotion. The paper argues for the need to understand the emotion of terror, the unique characteristics that make the study difficult, how autoethnography can overcome such obstacles, and illustrates the point with a detailed accounting of personal experience of a terrorist attack.

Violences of/in critical terrorism studies

ABSTRACT This article makes a case that CTS scholarship is always, necessarily, and specifically paradigmatically violent, even if one adopts CTS’ critiques of “mainstream” terrorism studies and understands CTS scholars to be normatively well-intended. In making that case, this article goes over different violences of CTS scholarship which have important impacts in the field and in the “real world” from which the field often distinguishes itself: the (often unreflected) reification of “terrorism” discourses, the (often uncritical) engagement with P/CVE initiatives, the construction and perpetuation of gendered and racialised ideas of agency in “terrorism” and “counterterrorism,” and the complex publication and citations practices in the field. The article then argues that the effects of these violences are made more intense by the violences involved with research reflexivity in the field, and even in this article. It concludes by discussing possible futures for a CTS, which acknowledges its own violences and looks to understand and even possibly redirect them.

The critical terrorism researcher: identity, positionality, and (de)coloniality

ABSTRACT Over the last two decades, Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS) has been crucial in contributing to critical research on terrorism that challenges the troublesome assumptions about “terrorism” developed in the field of Terrorism Studies, and which investigates the complexities that shape (counter-)terrorism in various socio-political contexts, especially so in the “post-9/11 era”. This has, however, also enabled the production of the identity of a uniquely critical terrorism researcher which, I argue in this article, is acutely underwritten by colonial epistemologies and assumptions that underpin “terrorism”. By drawing upon relevant insights from decolonial scholarship on the link between identity and knowledge production, especially through my engagement with Sylvia Wynter’s discourse on “Man and the coloniality of being”, this article aims to problematise the CTS researcher as a specific idea of Man (usually Western/white/bourgeoise/heterosexual) shaped by various descriptive statements including those about emancipation and inclusion that seeks to legitimise researchers in this sub-field as progenitors of genuine discourses about “terrorism”. By de-centring the CTS researcher through reflecting on my own research practices, choices and priorities, the article contributes to CTS debates on methodology as well as to the debate on “terrorism expertise”. It concludes by offering some reflections on the future of CTS.

Endogenous and exogenous effects in self‐exciting process models of terrorist activity

A model based on the cluster process representation of the self‐exciting process model is derived to allow for variation in the excitation effects for terrorist events in a self‐exciting or cluster process model. The model's derivation and implementation details are given and applied to data from the Global Terrorism Database (National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), 2015) from 2000 to 2013. Results regarding the practical interpretation and implications for a theoretical model paralleling existing criminological theory are discussed.

The Invisible Impact of Conflict: A Study of Terrorism, Regime Type, and the Shadow Economy

Does terrorism contribute to the growth of the shadow economy? While extensive literature has delved into the causes and consequences of terrorism, little has been studied on its impact on the shadow economy. Employing data on terrorism and the shadow economies of 116 countries from 1990 to 2017, we demonstrate that terrorism results in an increase in the size of the shadow economy and that the effect is larger in autocracies. We argue that the economic and social impacts of terrorism create environments that reinforce both exit and exclusion factors through the erosion of institutional trust and social capital, ultimately incentivizing or compelling actors to seek alternative methods of economic activities. Furthermore, a lack of free and horizontal information-sharing venues to address public fear and repressive counterterrorism measures in autocracies further hamper the economic pursuits of individuals, businesses, and foreign investors, facilitating their engagement in informal economic activities.

Facing the world as it is? On irony and (counter)terrorism

ABSTRACT Terrorism and counterterrorism are often described as “ironic”, but conceptual engagement with irony has been very limited. Building on the lifework of cultural anthropologist Joseba Zulaika, this article considers irony as an analytical meta-perspective in the critical study of (counter)terrorism. It draws on the life and work of German-American Christian ethicist Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) to argue that the ironies of (counter)terrorism under U.S. president Barack Obama, who admired Niebuhr, point to an unconscious failure of collective self-understanding. Dissolving these ironies requires new narratives of American identity that cut across foreign and domestic politics, state and non-state actors, the “war on terror” and white supremacy in a long view of history. Facilitating this multidirectional process of self-reflection and -transcendence is a key task for critical scholars of (counter)terrorism.

Where is Palestine in Critical Terrorism Studies? A roundtable conversation

ABSTRACT Our ethical responsibilities as researchers within or related to the study of “terrorism” could not be clearer than in moments when the “terrorism” label is used to justify mass killing and destruction. The state of Israel has relentlessly continued to bombard Gaza since 7 October 2023 and, with the support of Western nations, built consensus around framing all Palestinians as (potential) terrorists. In light of the horrors that the world is witnessing today, and the lack of engagement with Palestine in Critical Terrorism Studies research, we ask, how does – and should - Palestine feature in Critical Terrorism Studies scholarship? How can we, as researchers and educators, facilitate deeper conversations that challenge hegemonic and racist framings of “terrorism”? This roundtable discussion brings critical, anti-colonial, anti-racist, feminist, and queer scholars together to discuss 1) the exclusion of Palestine from the critical study of “terrorism” and 2) the significance of the Palestinian struggle for liberation for all researchers invested in the critical study of “terrorism”. We call for more serious engagement with Palestine and acknowledge that such a call is inseparable from a commitment to anti-colonial scholarship and activism. 1

Bad history: a historian’s critique of Rapoport’s “four waves of modern terrorism” model

ABSTRACT The late David C. Rapoport’s seminal “Four Waves of Modern Terrorism” model has exerted huge influence over approaches to historical and contemporary terrorism. Structuring the history of terrorism since the 1870s into four successive “waves”, the model purports to explain the origin, duration, and end of terrorist episodes, as well as the persistence of terrorism over the longue durée. Close examination of successive elaborations of the model reveals flaws and contradictions that undermine the theory itself. Most significantly, its central contention that terrorist waves follow a generational pattern is underdeveloped and under-evidenced. Such inherent weaknesses call into question the model’s usefulness. Consequently, the article argues that terrorism studies scholars should discard the model in favour of genuine historical study of terrorism in the past.

Strengths and Weaknesses of Open Source Data for Studying Terrorism and Political Radicalization

Compared to studying other forms of illegal violence, terrorism research faces unique data challenges. Notably, consistent police data are generally lacking, victims often have no direct knowledge of attacks and are sometimes killed, and perpetrators are difficult to interview and are often unreliable sources. In the face of these data challenges, the increasing availability of open source data on terrorist attacks and perpetrators has profoundly affected the scientific study of terrorism. Over time, a growing proportion of published academic research on terrorism—especially more heavily quantitative studies—relies on open source data. Moreover, the growing availability of individual-level terrorism data has allowed empirical tests of psychological and social-psychological theories of radicalization. In this paper, we assess the impact of open source data on the study of terrorism. We begin with an overview, providing a brief history of terrorist attack and perpetrator open source data bases. We then consider the major strengths and weaknesses of both types of open source data and suggest ways of countering the weaknesses. We close with observations about the impact of open source data on terrorism research and future opportunities for improvement.

Strengths and Weaknesses of Using Register Data to Study Extremism and Terrorism

In recent years, the study of terrorism and violent extremism has increasingly benefited from the use of register data such as population data and judicial data. The use of this type of data brings with it many advantages, such as the ability to study complete populations, to combine different sources of data, and, often, it enables researchers to take on a longitudinal and comparative approach. However, the use of register data also brings with it some significant challenges, in terms of acquiring the data (practical challenges) and in terms of biases in the data (content/ethical challenges). In this paper we discuss the usage of register data in terrorism research, with a focus on the Dutch and Swedish context. Whereas both countries are to some extent similar in that they both have a rich data-infrastructure, differences also exist regarding the type of data, agencies responsible for collecting and distributing the data, and ethical approaches. In the chapter, we will go into the strengths and weaknesses of using register data in research on terrorism and violent extremism. Moreover, we will elaborate on how the use of register data can be improved, what type of research questions can and cannot be answered based on register data, and on potential opportunities of integrating register data into mixed-methods designs.

Reimaging Subjugated Voice in Africa: A Battle for Hearts and Minds in Terrorism Studies

Reimaging Subjugated Voice in Africa: A Battle for Hearts and Minds in Terrorism Studies