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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political activism > Terrorism, freedom fighters, armed struggle
We cannot truly understand - let alone counter - terrorism in the 21st century unless we also understand the processes of communication that underpin it. This book challenges what we know about terrorism, showing that current approaches are inadequate and outdated, and develops a new communication model to understand terrorism in the media age.
Most books on terrorism deal with descriptions of terrorist organizations and activities, some examine privacy and civil liberties issues, and others treat terrorism as a series of policy choices. Hardly any books deal with the foundational questions of values and violence as they relate to terrorism. The two unique features of this book are that it deals with violence at the normative foundations of values and human dignity and that it includes many of the best-known authors in the world from a variety of disciplines, making it a paradigmatic example of cutting-edge study in interdisciplinary scholarship, with a focus on bringing theories and policy issues closer together. "Values and Violence" includes chapters by a dozen of the leading scholars in the world on patterns of political violence, responses to terrorism, and the basic value choices inherent in them.
This book explores the origins, interpretations and meanings of the term biosecurity. It brings together contributors on issues relating to the perceptions of the threat of biological weapons and how states are responding, or not, to the challenges posed by the potential of the products of the life sciences to be used for destructive purposes.
This book focuses on the developments in post 2014 Afghanistan with external military support from the United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies. It discusses topical themes such as the withdrawal of US troops and non-traditional security.
Using psychological theory and the author's direct experience working with at-risk youth, this book answers the questions on the minds of anyone shocked and appalled by the events of the Boston Marathon bombings. The shock of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings was soon followed by a revelation initially disturbing and mystifying: two apparently unremarkable brothers-one a teenager, the other a young adult; both well-liked immigrants and longtime U.S. residents-had allegedly triggered the bombs. Why were these two seemingly "normal" individuals driven to commit such acts of coldblooded violence? This book examines not only the lives, motivations, and key influences of these infamous brothers, but those of other young, unexpected terrorists worldwide, comparing factors that contributed to their decisions to become terrorists and identifying methods used to recruit them into that deadly fold. The chapters teach readers warning signs that youths are being drawn in to terrorism and serve to spur meaningful conversations among citizens, politicians, and policymakers about what we can do to prevent such recruitment of youths and young adults, including other U.S. residents who might consider emulating the Tsarnaev brothers. The book also addresses larger, related questions, such as whether humans are naturally violent, who benefits when young individuals engage in terrorism, and why minors are recruited to become killers. Identifies the various factors and influences that drove two young men who were described by many who knew them to be "nice, normal people" to commit premeditated acts of violence Addresses recent events in other countries with similarly aged and seemingly unthreatening young adults and teens as perpetrators of attacks Provides an appendix containing sources for further research, including books, news articles, links to journal articles, and websites of research organizations Includes a foreword by Michael Lamport Commons, PhD, Harvard Medical School
This book assesses the causes for, and the implications of, the escalating lethality of terrorism. This is then placed in the context of the growing opportunities for nuclear proliferation arising from the collapse of the Soviet Union. The book concludes that the organizational and psychological pressures within terrorist groups and the changing nature of political violence, combined with the heightened danger of nuclear non-proliferation, have made mass-destructive terrorism the greatest non-traditional threat to intellectual security in the world today.
Terrorism and terrorists have become a much talked about topic. Terrorism is often seen as a Middle Eastern problem and terrorists are often perceived as only having a Muslim background. It may surprise many to learn that Americans are and have been terrorists since the birth of the nation. This book investigates and discusses many instances in which Americans were themselves the terrorists and the victims.
This work, together with Mickolus's "Literature of Terrorism: A Selectively Annotated Bibliography," published in 1980, provides the most comprehensive bibliography on terrorist violence available in print. "Terrorism, 1980-1987" concentrates on material written during the 1980s, a period which has seen an enormous outpouring of commentary and research on terrorism and terrorist attacks. In addition to surveying journalistic, social scientific, and traditional historical studies in some dozen languages, the book also includes the fictional literature of terrorism, offering a broad cross-section of research and opinion on the subject. The material is organized into sections based on region and functional categories, enabling the researcher to compare quickly developments in specific topics. Coverage ranges from general treatments of terrorism and tactics of terrorists to material that deals with the terrorist infrastructure, terrorism in specific geographic areas, and responses to terrorism. The compilers have made special efforts to include items from publications not often cited in terrorism studies, both to give the reader an indication of the breadth of material available and to offer insights into the pervasive effects of terrorism on all aspects of life.
This important work, edited by an expert on terrorism, focuses on the 21st-century struggle for strategic influence and ways in which states can neutralize the role of new media in spreading terrorist propaganda. In an era where anyone can have access to the Internet or other media forms that make widespread communication easy, terrorists and insurgents can spread their messages with complete freedom, creating challenges for national security. Influence Warfare: How Terrorists and Governments Fight to Shape Perceptions in a War of Ideas focuses on the core of the ongoing struggle for strategic influence and, particularly, how states can counter the role media and the Internet play in radicalizing new agents of terrorism. As the book makes clear, governments need to find ways to effectively confront non-state adversaries at all levels of the information domain and create an understanding of strategic communications within a broad range of technologies. The essays from the international group of authors who contributed to this work offer a deeper understanding of the ongoing struggle. Influence Warfare also provides a set of case studies that illustrate how the means and methods of strategic influence can impact a nation's security. Case studies
Most philosophers and political scientists readily admit that Thomas Hobbes is a significant figure in the history of political thought. His theory was, arguably, one of the first to provide a justification for political legitimacy from the perspective of each individual subject. Many excellent books and articles have examined the justification and structure of Hobbes' commonwealth, ethical system, and interpretation of Christianity. What is troubling is that the Hobbesian project has been largely missing in the applied ethics and public policy literature. We often find applications of Kantian deontology, Bentham's or Mill's utilitarianism, Rawls's contractualism, the ethics of care, and various iterations of virtue ethics. Hobbesian accounts are routinely ignored and often derided. This is unfortunate because Hobbes's project offers a unique perspective. To ignore it, when such a perspective would be fruitful to apply to another set of theoretical questions, is a problem in need of a remedy. This volume seeks to eliminate (or, at the very least, partially fill) this gap in the literature. Not only will this volume appeal to those that are generally familiar with Hobbesian scholarship, it will also appeal to a variety of readers that are largely unfamiliar with Hobbes.
Spreading Hate examines the evolution of the white power movement around the world, explaining its appeal and the threat it poses as well as many failures. The modern white power movement is now a global, transnational phenomenon. In this sweeping, authoritative account, Daniel Byman traces the key moments in the white power movement's evolution in the United States and around the world and then details its many facets today. Using a wide range of sources, Byman explodes several myths about white power terrorism and exposes dangerous gaps in current policies. For almost two decades since 9/11, white supremacist terrorism has been relegated to a secondary concern in the US and Europe despite the fact that it was clearly metastasizing. This neglect has led to shocking episodes of violence from New Zealand to Norway to South Carolina and has eroded faith in Western democratic institutions. Because white power terrorists' grievances echo mainstream debates and their violence often exacerbates polarization, their political impact can be inordinately high even if the body count is low. As Byman stresses, they are not a hide-bound movement seeking to turn back the clock, but are dynamic, drawing on ideas from around the world and exploiting the most cutting-edge technologies, especially social media. White power terrorists, however, have many weaknesses. They are divided, with poor leadership, and often attract the incompetent and the criminal as well as the dangerous and deluded. If governments act decisively and treat white power terrorism with the same urgency they use to manage jihadist violence, then the threat can be reduced. This will require aggressive law enforcement, international intelligence cooperation, crackdowns by technology companies, and other forceful steps. Considering policy solutions as well as synthesizing a vast body of scholarly research, Spreading Hate will be essential reading for anyone worried about this an increasingly networked movement that threatens to grow more dangerous in the years to come.
With intensified threats to global security from international terrorism worldwide, education systems themselves face these same unprecedented security threats. Schools and universities have become marked loci of interest for the monitoring of extremism and counter-terrorism by security and intelligence agencies. The relationship between education systems and national security is nothing new though - it extends in surprising and unexpected ways into territory which is by turns open and covert, even secret. Acknowledging the genuine political and security concerns which have drawn educational systems ever closer to the intelligence community, this book shows how and why this has happened, and explains why the relationship between education and the security and intelligence communities extends beyond contemporary concerns with counter-terrorism. As the title of this book demonstrates, this is as much an intellectual challenge as a security struggle. Education, Security and Intelligence Studies thus critically engages with multi-disciplinary perspectives on a complex and contentious interface: between systems of often secret and covert national security and intelligence and open systems of national education. Delving into difficult to access and often closely guarded aspects of public life, the book provides the pathfinding groundwork and theoretical modelling for research into a complex of little explored institutional and epistemological interconnectedness between universities and the security and intelligence agencies. This book was originally published as a special issue of the British Journal of Educational Studies.
This book deals with the difficulty democracies face in conducting asymmetric warfare in highly populated areas without violating international humanitarian law. On numerous occasions, democratic nations have been singled out by human rights NGOs for the brutality of their modus operandi, for their inadequate attention to the protection of civilian populations, or for acts of abuse or torture on prisoners. Why do they perpetrate these violations? Do they do so intentionally or unintentionally? Can democracies combat irregular armed groups without violating international law? When their population is under threat, do they behave as non-democracies would? Does this type of war inevitably produce war crimes on a more or less massive scale?
This study investigates the overlaps between political discourse and literary and cinematic fiction, arguing that both are informed by, and contribute to, the cultural imaginary of terrorism. Whenever mass-mediated acts of terrorism occur, they tend to trigger a proliferation of threat scenarios not only in the realm of literature and film but also in the statements of policymakers, security experts, and journalists. In the process, the discursive boundary between the factual and the speculative can become difficult to discern. To elucidate this phenomenon, this book proposes that terror is a halfway house between the real and the imaginary. For what characterizes terrorism is less the single act of violence than it is the fact that this act is perceived to be the beginning, or part, of a potential series, and that further acts are expected to occur. As turn-of-the-century writers such as Stevenson and Conrad were the first to point out, this gives terror a fantastical dimension, a fact reinforced by the clandestine nature of both terrorist and counter-terrorist operations. Supported by contextual readings of selected texts and films from The Dynamiter and The Secret Agent through late-Victorian science fiction to post-9/11 novels and cinema, this study explores the complex interplay between actual incidents of political violence, the surrounding discourse, and fictional engagement with the issue to show how terrorism becomes an object of fantasy. Drawing on research from a variety of disciplines, The Cultural Imaginary of Terrorism will be a valuable resource for those with interests in the areas of Literature and Film, Terrorism Studies, Peace and Conflict Studies, Trauma Studies, and Cultural Studies.
In this timely book, Marranci critically surveys the available
theories on Islamic fundamentalism and extremism. Rejecting
essentialism and cultural reductionism, the book suggests that
identity and emotion play an essential role in the phenomenon that
has been called fundamentalism.
This book offers an accessible and timely analysis of the 'War on Terror', based on an innovative approach to a broad range of theoretical and empirical research. It uses 'gendered orientalism' as a lens through which to read the relationship between the George W. Bush administration, gendered and racialized military intervention, and global politics. Khalid argues that legitimacy, power, and authority in global politics, and the 'War on Terror' specifically, are discursively constructed through representations that are gendered and racialized, and often orientalist. Looking at the ways in which 'official' US 'War on Terror' discourse enabled military intervention into Afghanistan and Iraq, the book takes a postcolonial feminist approach to broaden the scope of critical analyses of the 'War on Terror' and reflect on the gendered and racial underpinnings of key relations of power within contemporary global politics. This book is a unique, innovative and significant analysis of the operation of race, orientalism, and gender in global politics, and the 'War on Terror' specifically. It will be of great interest to scholars and graduates interested in gender politics, development, humanitarian intervention, international (global) relations, Middle East politics, security, and US foreign policy.
Ulrike Meinhof's entrance into the West German terrorist underground was both a footnote to the waning student movement of the late 1960s, and a preamble to the bloodiest period in Germany's post-war history. Meinhof fought to make herself heard as a high-profile journalist before becoming a founding member of the Red Army Faction (RAF) in 1970. She continued writing in the underground and from 1972, in prison, until she was found dead in her cell in 1976. Leith Passmore traces Meinhof's struggle to communicate from her time as a journalist, through her escape to the underground, her prison years, and the Stammheim trial. He examines for the first time the performativity of terrorist acts of language, imagery, and physical violence to reveal how Meinhof made and re-made RAF terrorism.
This book provides a unique perspective, at once scholarly and fully engaged, on the political violence in South Africa during 'The Time of the Comrades' in the mid-1980s. The work of a group of social scientists and professionals, whose own work and thinking have been profoundly affected by the political crisis of that time, it provides an in-depth research and analysis as well as critical reflections on the difficult political and theoretical issues raised by political violence and the struggle in South Africa.
Security Games: Surveillance and Control at Mega-Events addresses the impact of mega-events - such as the Olympic Games and the World Cup - on wider practices of security and surveillance. "Mega-Events" pose peculiar and extensive security challenges. The overwhelming imperative is that "nothing should go wrong." There are, however, an almost infinite number of things that can "go wrong"; producing the perceived need for pre-emptive risk assessments, and an expanding range of security measures, including extensive forms and levels of surveillance. These measures are delivered by a "security/industrial complex" consisting of powerful transnational corporate, governmental and military actors, eager to showcase the latest technologies and prove that they can deliver "spectacular levels of security". Mega-events have thus become occasions for experiments in monitoring people and places. And, as such, they have become important moments in the development and dispersal of surveillance, as the infrastructure established for mega-events are often marketed as security solutions for the more routine monitoring of people and place. Mega-events, then, now serve as focal points for the proliferation of security and surveillance. They are microcosms of larger trends and processes, through which - as the contributors to this volume demonstrate - we can observe the complex ways that security and surveillance are now implicated in unique confluences of technology, institutional motivations, and public-private security arrangements. As the exceptional conditions of the mega-event become the norm, Security Games: Surveillance and Control at Mega-Events therefore provides the glimpse of a possible future that is more intensively and extensively monitored.
This book examines the role of gender in political conflicts worldwide, specifically the intersection between gender and terrorism. Political violence has historically been viewed as a male domain with men considered the perpetrators of violence and power, and women as victims without power. Whereas men and masculinity are associated with war and aggression, women and femininity conjure up socially constructed images of passivity and peace. This distinction of men as aggressors and women as passive victims denies women their voice and agency. This book investigates how women cope with and influence violent politics, and is both a descriptive and analytical attempt to describe in what ways women are present or absent in political contexts involving political violence, and how they deal with gender assumptions, express gender identities, and frame their actions regarding political violence encountered in their lives. The book looks to reach beyond the notion of women as victims of terrorism or genocide without agency, and to recognize the gendered nature of political conflicts and how women respond to violence. This book will be of interest to advanced undergraduate and graduate students in political science, sociology, cultural studies, and gender studies, academics in terrorism studies and gender studies, government officials, NGOs, and professionals working in areas of violent conflict.
Phases of Terrorism in the Age of Globalization considers terrorism as an aspect of the capitalist world system for almost five centuries. Jalata's research reveals that terrorism can emerge from above as state terrorism and below as subversive organizations or groups.
Preparing for the Worst details the best practices in antiterrorism tactics and preparing for disaster. This book is for typical American families, business travelers, corporate executive management personnel, emergency first responders, school administrators, and local government officials responsible for public safety and emergency management. Americans are regularly bombarded with reports of disaster and tragedy in the daily news. Catastrophes like earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, violent crimes, and terrorism are so common and routine that many of us have become numb to the stories. Without a heightened awareness, focused concern, and effective planning, we have lost the edge that can save lives. Do you know what you should do to protect your family during a disaster? Does your neighbor have the knowledge required to survive a catastrophic event? Part of the solution is rooted in common sense, but much more depends upon effectively applying learned survival skills. Americans need a helpful reference tool-a Swiss army knife for handling today's threats. This book is that tool. A former U.S. Marine and Desert Storm veteran, Schaefer-Jones has experienced calamity firsthand. He is also a concerned husband and the father of three young children. While considering how he would personally handle a disastrous event close to home, he came to realize that a comprehensive how-to guide was not available-until now.
Ludger Mees offers the first comprehensive study of one of Europe's most protracted ethnic conflicts. He carefully analyses both the historical roots of the conflict and its later growing violent dimension. Special attention is paid to the framing of a new opportunity structure during the 1990s, which facilitated the first serious, but ultimately frustrated, attempt to broker a settlement. In the light of different theoretical and comparative approaches, the reasons for the dramatic return of terrorism and the possibilities of a more successful conflict de-escalation in the near future are discussed.
This is the first in-depth reconstruction of a major British decolonization based fully on original documentation. Robert Holland's unique case-study is essential reading for anybody interested in the response of policy makers to the challenge of 'terrorism' overseas after 1945, the liquidation of the British Empire, the breakdown of ethnic co-existence under intense pressure, and the effects of regional destabilization on the wider international system. |
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