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This chapter provides a personal reflection on the author’s intellectual and emotional journey towards being one of the founding scholars of critical terrorism studies (CTS). It explains some of the formative influences and life experiences which eventually led to the decision, along with others, to hold a conference on CTS, launch a CTS working group within the British International Studies Association (BISA), start a new journal, and publish a series of books and articles outlining the CTS approach to the study of terrorism. As such, it provides greater understanding of the role of academic entrepreneurs in developing new fields, as well as the particular focus and approach of CTS to the study of terrorism and counterterrorism.

This article examines a neglected dimension of the dominant discourse of terrorism, namely, the vernacular, ‘everyday narratives’ of lay members of the public. While there are many studies of elite- and public-level discourses of terrorism, large numbers of public opinion and attitude studies, and a growing number of focus group studies on vernacular understandings of security and citizenship, there are few studies which specifically focus on lay discourses of terrorism. Importantly, there are even fewer studies which employ discursive psychology and conversation analysis as their primary methodological approach. Consequently, we do not know much about how ordinary people speak about in daily conversation – and therefore, how they understand or ‘know’ – what terrorism is, how it manifests, what its causes are, and how it is best dealt with. This article reports on some of the key findings of an empirical study of vernacular discourse about terrorism carried out in Aberystwyth, Wales. It reflects on what these findings tell us about how important political discourses are expressed in different arenas by different actors, how they are consumed and circulate, how they are resisted, how hegemonic they are in practice, and how they reflect cultural dispositions and the politics of legitimacy.

This article describes the nature, origins and consequences of the epistemological crisis at the heart of contemporary counterterrorism. The epistemological crisis of counterterrorism is an identifiable epistemic posture towards knowledge about, as well as a way of acting towards, the terrorist threat. It manifests itself discursively in the manner in which officials, scholars, pundits and others speak about the threat of terrorism, and the way counterterrorism and security practitioners then act in pursuit of security against that threat. The article argues that many of the bizarre counterterrorist practices regularly observed in many Western countries, as well as costly and counterproductive counterterrorist practices such as preemptive war, targeted killings, mass surveillance, torture, control orders and de-radicalisation programmes, among others, are neither anomalous nor irrational in the context of the new paradigm. Rather, they flow logically and directly from the particular paranoid logic, which ...

When the editors of Critical Studies on Terrorism wrote their introduction to the inaugural issue in April 2008, they noted that “terrorism” was a “growth industry” which generated a huge amount of social and political activity, and affected an extensive list of areas of social and cultural life (Breen Smyth et al, 2008: 1). They also noted that there was a yawning gap between the actual material threat posed by terrorists, and the level of investment and activity devoted to responding to it. They suggested that a central analytical task facing critical scholars of terrorism was therefore to explain “how such a small set of behaviours by such small numbers of individuals generates such a pervasive, intrusive and complex series of effects across the world” (Ibid). Lastly, they noted that the political, legal, cultural and academic context in which the journal was being launched was characterised by a very violent global war on terror, frequent moral panics and the political manipulation of terrorism fears, increasingly draconian anti-terrorism legislation, and the mass proliferation of academic and cultural terrorism-related texts.

I am grateful to Jacob Sump for his thoughtful engagement with my article, and to the editors of BS TPA for allowing me the opportunity to reply to some of the concerns and issues raised in Stumps comments. The publication of these kinds of intellectual exchanges is important for the continued development of the wider field of terrorism studies, not least because the nature and definition of the fumes central concept remains highly contested, and how we conceive of terrorism as an object of research will have a real and lasting impact on how we study, speak about and respond to it. In this case, it is also an important means of bringing together different sides of the field and allowing new kinds of questions and issues to be raised in a public scholarly forum. In this brief reply, I will direct my comments mainly to a few clarifications about the aims and purposes of the original article as a way of addressing some of the criticisms raised by stone. I would leave the more complex and broader ontological and epistemological issues to be debated by others for qualified. My purpose in writing the article and publishing it in this journal (rather than in Critical Studies on Terrorism, for example) was, to use Stumps terms, to try and find a middle way between duelist and monist approaches to the study of terrorism. That is, I tried to tentatively suggest a set of definitional anchorages and provide a definition which charts of course between the extremes of ontological essentialism and radical contingency. To my view, dualists take an ontologically essential view of what terrorism is, while monists are radically contingent in treating terrorism as a metaphor or social construction. In other words, my purpose was actually to try to open up and widen the field by, first, encouraging those terrorism scholars who adapt to a dualist ontology to be more reflexive in their use of categories and to a college historical and cultural contingency and therefore limitations of the term, and second, encouraging those critical scholars who adopt a monist position like stump himself, to refrain from throwing the baby out with the bathwater and retreating into a form of terrorism studies that restricts itself to the study of the discourses, metaphors, and representational practices of terrorism.... In addition, my intention in the article was to try and contribute some thoughts to a very specific but important problem within the wider terrorism studies view, That is the definitional problem, While at the same time, responding to critics of critical terrorism studies CTS who the wisdom and utility of retaining the term"terrorism" at all within our critical project. The article was certainly not intended to "clarify and advance CTS" as a whole or contribute to...

A series of high-profile terrorism attacks, as well as international concern about the military successes and social media activities of Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq, means that fourteen years after the beginning of the global “war on terror,” academic, media, and political interest in terrorism and counterterrorism remain as high as they have ever been. Since that momentous day in September 2001, terrorism – and the global response to it – has taken on a prominent role in foreign and security policy, policing, intelligence gathering, lawmaking, immigration, banking, homeland security, the news media, art, literature and movies, international relations, and academic research, among a multitude of other aspects of social, economic, political, and cultural life. In fact, in many respects, terrorism – or more accurately, the response to it – has become the fulcrum for a series of deep and profound transformations in the processes of international relations, the conduct of the state, culture and society, and the subjectivity of the citizen-subject. The rise and consolidation of the new academic field of critical terrorism studies (CTS) have been parts of this social history since 2001.

This article employs Foucault's concept of ‘subjugated knowledges’ to explore forms of knowledge which provide explanations of the nature, causes and solutions to terrorism and political violence, but which have been suppressed and silenced within the terrorism studies field. Subjugated knowledges include historical knowledges that are present within the functional and systemic ensemble of terrorism studies itself, but which have been masked by more dominant forms of knowledge, as well as knowledges outside of the field that have been disqualified and excluded as naive, inferior or below the required level of scientificity. This article analyses some of the primary mechanisms and processes by which knowledge subjugation takes place in terrorism studies and the consequences of such suppressions and exclusions. It argues that the presence of subjugated knowledge means that the field exists in a highly unstable condition where certain forms of knowledge are simultaneously known and unknown and where eruption...

This article assesses the validity of the concept of ‘religious terrorism’ and its consequences for research and policy practices. It explores the origins, assumptions and primary arguments of the term and subjects them to an analytical assessment. It argues that the distinctions typically drawn between ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ terrorism are problematic, both conceptually and empirically, and that the term is misleading in its typical assumptions about the motives, causes and behaviour of groups classified as ‘religious terrorist’. In particular, it shows that the behaviour of those thus labelled is so diverse, and often so indistinguishable from their ‘secular’ counterparts, that the term has little meaning without further qualification, while simultaneously obscuring important aspects of both ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ violence. It then goes on to illustrate how the term, rooted in a particular historically situated understanding of religion and a particular set of power structures, serves as a discipli...

This article offers a revisionary re‐description of the central characteristics of terrorism in an attempt to put forward a persuasive definition under which scholars could converge. It accepts that there are valid reasons for rejecting the term, not least because it is a socially constructed label that has been misused in public discourse. Nonetheless, it argues that, based on a ‘minimal foundationalist’ ontological position, it is possible to define and describe the key characteristics of terrorist violence. The article then attempts to re‐describe the characteristics of terrorism by dealing with a number of common misconceptions, such as the notion that terrorism is violence directed at civilians or non‐combatants by non‐state actors, before offering a contingent definition of terrorism relevant to the present historical moment. The article concludes by outlining a range of additional pragmatic and normative reasons for retaining the term as a research concept.

Terrorism studies is one of the fastest-growing areas of social scientific research in the English-speaking world. This article examines some of the main challenges, problems and future developments facing the wider terrorism studies field through a review of seven recently published books. It argues that while a great deal of the current research is characterised by a persistent set of weaknesses, an increasing number of theoretically rigorous and critically oriented studies that challenge established views suggest genuine reasons for optimism about the future of terrorism research.

Having launched the first issue of Critical Studies on Terrorism, and with the second part of the Symposium on the state of terrorism studies ready for publication, this is an opportune moment to s...

Torture has been widely practiced by US forces as an officially-sanctioned information gathering strategy in the war on terrorism. At the same time, public attitudes have exhibited a growing tolerance towards the torture of terrorist suspects. This article examines the role of elite political discourse in constructing and sustaining the conditions necessary for the acceptance and normalisation of torture. It argues that a focus on elite discourse is crucial for understanding how torture comes to be practised because discourses set the logic and parameters of policy formulation and create the wider social legitimacy that is required to enact policy, thereby facilitating the construction of a broader torture-sustaining reality. The study’s findings highlight the role of ideational factors in policy analysis and have important normative implications.

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.

More than a decade of the war on terror has increased levels of direct and structural violence and strengthened the forces of political oppression across the globe. Within this historical material context, as well as the intellectual context of the “narrative turn” and the wider “cultural turn” currently underway in International Relations, this article explores the ways in which the terrorism novel might act as a mode of discursive resistance or literary resistance to these (oppressive) forms of power, as a site of emancipatory agonistic politics, and as a social scientific method of analysis. Among possible forms of discursive resistance, the novel—as a narrative mode—has genuine potential due to its affective as opposed to confrontational form, its engagement with the emotional aspects of international politics, its lack of conventional boundaries, and its potential reach. However, to date, the terrorism novel has not realized its potential as a mode of resistance, but has instead tended to reinforce the counterterrorism truth regime by reinforcing and maintaining the modern terrorism taboo. In this respect, the publication of Confessions of a Terrorist: A Novel (Jackson 2014) represents something of a watershed, as it is one of the first sympathetic fictional depictions of a terrorist and the first to give primary voice to the perspective of the terrorist. Allowing the terrorist to speak not only acts to resist and undermine the terrorism taboo and generate empathetic projection, but potentially also creates an agonistic moment in which the violent subaltern can speak on an equal footing directly to the counterterrorist—and by extension, to the reader. The article concludes by reflecting on the potential of the novel as a site of both resistance and agonistic encounter and the challenges of employing literary resistance to domination.

The “war on terrorism” is both a series of institutional practices and an accompanying set of political narratives. Employing the methodology of critical discourse analysis, the study suggests that the language of the “war on terrorism” is not simply a neutral or objective reflection of policy debates and the realities of terrorism and counter-terrorism; rather, it is a very carefully and deliberately constructed public discourse that is specifically designed to make the war seem reasonable, responsible, and inherently “good.” More importantly, as it is currently constructed, the language and practice of the “war on terrorism” poses severe challenges to the democratic state, including destabilizing the moral community, weakening democratic values and civic culture, undermining the legitimacy of democratic institutions, and preventing the articulation of potentially more effective counter-terrorism approaches.

1. State Terrorism in the Social Sciences: Theories, Methods and Concepts Ruth Blakeley 2. Darfur's Dread: Contemporary State Terrorism in the Sudan David Mickler 3. State Terrorism and the Military in Pakistan Eamon Murphy and Aazar Tamana 4. Israel's Other Terrorism Challenge Sandra Nasr 5. 'We have no orders to save you': State Terrorism, Politics and Communal Violence in the Indian state of Gujarat, 2002 Eamon Murphy 6. The Politics of Convenient Silence in Southern Africa: Relocating the Terrorism of the State Joan Wardrop 7. Revenge and Terror: The Destruction of the Palestinian Community in Kuwait Victoria Mason 8. Winning Hearts and Mines: The Bougainville Crisis, 1988-90 Kristian Lasslett 9. Paramilitarism and State Terror in Colombia Sam Raphael 10. 'We are all in Guantanamo': State Terror and the case of Mamdouh Habib Scott Poynting 11. From Garrison State to Garrison Planet: State Terror, the War on Terror and the Rise of a Global Carceral Complex Jude McCulloch 12. The Deterrence Logic of State Warfare: Israel and the Second Lebanon War, 2006 Karine Hamilton Conclusion: Contemporary State Terrorism: Towards a New Research Agenda Richard Jackson

There is no doubt that the decision to launch a global ‘war on terror’ was a historic moment in US foreign policy which was to have profound consequences both internationally and domestically. To date, the ‘war on terror’ has entailed two major wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, significant military operations in Pakistan, Somalia, the Philippines, Georgia and elsewhere, a global intelligence and rendition programme, the expansion of US military bases to new regions, increased military assistance to new and old client regimes, an extensive international public diplomacy programme, the articulation of new national security doctrines and priorities, and a major domestic reorganisation of and increased investment in the military, domestic security agencies, policing, the legal system and numerous other agencies – among a great many other important developments. It is no exaggeration to suggest that the ‘war on terror’ is now comparable to the Cold War in terms of overall expenditure and its impact on all aspects of US foreign policy, external relations and domestic politics. And yet, understanding or explaining these developments is not a straightforwardtask. It is not obvious that attacks by a small group of dissidents aggrieved by the US military presence in the Arabian Peninsula on 11 September 2001, as devastating as they were, should have generated such an expansive and far-reaching response from the world’s only superpower, or that the response should have involved all of the specific elements we have thus far witnessed. In the first place, as ongoing contestations over the meaning and significance of the Pearl Harbor attack (Rosenberg 2003) or the Kennedy assassination clearly demonstrate, acts of political violence do not necessarily ‘speak for themselves’; they have to be narrated and interpreted in meaningful ways within a particular social, cultural and historical context. The attacks on New York and Washington were potentially open to a number of different interpretations, only one of which was as an ‘act of war’ necessitating a military response. The choice to launch a potentially unlimited and global war is all the more puzzling given the relatively limited extent of the terrorist threat to human life (certainly compared to climate change, disease or poverty, for example) and the ultimately foreseeable consequences of specific actions such as intervention in Iraq, the Guantanamo Bay detentions, extraordinary rendition, the announcement of the Bush Doctrine, and so on. And it is certainly far from clear that the elimination or even significant reduction of the terrorist threat has been achieved through the means the Bush administration and its allies have employed in the ‘war on terror’. A key puzzle therefore, lies in understanding why the ‘war on terror’ was chosen overother foreign policy or counter-terror frameworks by key foreign policy decisionmakers, and why it took the form that it did. Traditional accounts of internationalrelations and security (most notably Realism) would provide at best a partial and at worst a misleading account of the US government’s foreign policy choices and practices in this context, emphasising as they do the central role of material distributions of power and the rational calculation of the national interest.1 In this chapter, we argue that a Constructivist perspective provides a productive and informative analytical lens through which to understand how the ‘war on terror’ emerged as the dominant US foreign policy discourse after the events of 11 September 2001, taking on the particular form/s that it did. We suggest that a focus on ideational factors characteristic of a Constructivist approach to international relations – narrative, framing, identity, norms, contestation and negotiation, among others – provides particularly important insights into the emergence and institutionalisation of the ‘war on terror’ in the US context. The chapter begins with a necessarily brief overview of Constructivism, outlining itsorigins, variants, shared assumptions and ontology. The second section examines the application of Constructivist insights to US foreign policy in the ‘war on terror’, focusing in particular on the inter-subjective social construction of the ‘war on terror’ itself. In the conclusion, we reflect on the utility of the Constructivist approach.

Terrorism studies was once a relatively minor specialist subfield of security studies and international relations. Today, it exhibits all the characteristics of a major stand-alone academic field, having its own: dedicated scholarly journals (Terrorism and Political Violence, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism and more recently, Critical Studies on Terrorism); graduate and post-graduate teaching and research programmes at most major universities in America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific; a growing number of dedicated research centres and think tanks; a coterie of widely recognised scholars and experts; regular academic conferences; and an accepted body of literature, including a number of widely cited core texts.2

In response to the growth of a critical perspective on contemporary issues of terrorism, this edited volume brings together a number of leading scholars to debate the new subfield of 'critical terrorism studies'. In the years since the 9/11 attacks, terrorism studies has undergone a major transformation from minor subfield of security studies into a large stand-alone field, and is probably one of the fastest expanding areas of research in the Western academic world. However, much of the literature is beset by a number of problems, limiting its potential for producing rigorous empirical findings and genuine theoretical advancement. In response to these weaknesses in the broader field, a small but increasing number of scholars have begun to articulate a critical perspective on contemporary issues of terrorism. This volume brings together a number of leading scholars to debate the need for and the shape of this exciting new subfield.The first part of the volume examines some of the main shortcomings and limitations of orthodox terrorism studies, while the second examines exactly what a 'critical' terrorism studies would look like. Contributors from a variety of methodological and disciplinary perspectives give this volume diversity, and it will lay the foundations for, and provoke debate about, the future research agenda of this new field. This book will be of much interest to students of critical security studies, terrorism studies and IR theory in general.

It is widely believed that important national events such as wars or acts of terrorism are so obvious that they do not require analysis or interpretation; instead, they are said to “speak for themselves.” The attacks on September 11, 2001, are thought by many to fall into this category; like the events of December 7, 1941 (to which they are frequently compared) it seemed obvious—commonsense even—that this was an “act of war” committed by evil men on the American way of life and its core values that necessitated a large-scale military response.