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The future study of terrorism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 May 2016

Richard English
Richard English*
Affiliation:
Wardlaw Professor of Politics, University of St Andrews
*
*Correspondence to: Professor Richard English, Room 235, Arts Building, The Scores, St Andrews, Fife, KY16 9AX, Scotland, United Kingdom. Author’s email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article reflects on the central problems to be faced over the next fifty years of the academic study of terrorism. It discusses a series of problems that are sometimes raised (regarding definition, the division between Critical Terrorism Studies and Orthodox Terrorism Studies, and the supposed stagnation in contemporary terrorism research), and argues that these present rather limited difficulties, in reality. It then identifies a greater problem, in the form of a five-fold fragmentation of the current field, before offering suggested means of addressing in practice these latter, more profound difficulties.

Keywords

TerrorismTerrorism StudiesPolitical Violence
Type
Research Article
Information
European Journal of International Security , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , July 2016 , pp. 135 - 149
Copyright
© British International Studies Association 2016 

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References

1 Arguably the greatest of terrorism scholars, Martha Crenshaw, formally began her graduate student research into terrorism in 1967 (Crenshaw, Martha, Explaining Terrorism: Causes, Processes and Consequences (London: Routledge, 2011), p. ixGoogle Scholar). For consideration of the early years of the academic study of terrorism (focusing mainly on the US), see Stampnitzky, Lisa, Disciplining Terror: How Experts Invented ‘Terrorism’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 English, Richard, ‘The enduring illusions of terrorism and counter-terrorism’, in Richard English (ed.), Illusions of Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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7 It adheres to the definition that I set out in 2009: ‘Terrorism involves heterogeneous violence used or threatened with a political aim; it can involve a variety of acts, of targets, and of actors; it possesses an important psychological dimension, producing terror or fear among a directly threatened group and also a wider implied audience in the hope of maximizing political communication and achievement; it embodies the exerting and implementing of power, and the attempted redressing of power-relations; it represents a subspecies of warfare, and as such it can form part of a wider campaign of violent and nonviolent attempts at political leverage.’ See English, Richard, Terrorism: How to Respond (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 24Google Scholar.

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33 Such scholars include Daniel Byman, Eli Berman, Bruce Hoffman, Martha Crenshaw, Mark Juergensmeyer, Dipak Gupta, John Horgan, Max Abrahms, Barbara Walter, Mia Bloom, David Rapoport, Alan Krueger, Laura Donohue, Joseba Zulaika, Jacob Shapiro, Robert Pape, David Laitin, and Barak Mendelsohn.

34 Among others: Alex Schmid, Javier Argomaniz, Anthony Richards, Andrew Silke, Gilbert Ramsay, Richard Jackson, Ariel Merari, Rashmi Singh, Claude Berrebi, Diego Muro, Esteban Klor, Stuart Croft, Conor Gearty, Adrian Guelke, Thomas Hegghammer, Donatella Della Porta, Tore Bjorgo, Rogelio Alonso, Fernando Reinares, and Diego Gambetta.

35 LaFree, Dugan, and Miller, Putting Terrorism in Context, p. 7.

36 LaFree, Dugan, and Miller, Putting Terrorism in Context.

37 Krueger, What Makes a Terrorist, pp. 44–6.

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41 LaFree, Dugan, and Miller, Putting Terrorism in Context, p. 53.

42 LaFree, Dugan, and Miller in Putting Terrorism in Context suggest a global figure for terrorist attacks for 1972 at well under 1,000 (p. 29). Since the respected Conflict Archive on the Internet (CAIN) records well over 10,000 shooting incidents and well over 1,000 bomb explosions in Northern Ireland alone for 1972, that figure seems implausible.

43 LaFree, Dugan, and Miller, Putting Terrorism in Context, p. 27.

44 Ibid., p. 33.

45 Ibid., p. 81.

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50 English (ed.), Illusions of Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism.