An exploration of how political violence is constructed, this book presents the life stories of individuals once committed to political transformation through violent means in Portugal. Challenging simplistic conceptualisations about the actors of violence, this book examines issues of temporality, gender and interpersonal dynamics in the study of political violence. It is the first comprehensive case study of political violence in Portugal, based on the perspectives of former militants. These are individuals from different political spheres who became convinced that they could not be mere spectators of the circumstances of their times. For them, the only viable way of making a difference was through violent acts. Applying the Dialogical Self Theory to trace the identity positions underpinning their narratives, this book not only sheds light on radicalisation and deradicalisation processes at the individual level, but also on the meso- and macro-level contexts that instigate engagement with and encourage disengagement from armed organisations. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of critical terrorism studies, political violence, European history and security studies more generally.

This volume is a timely contribution to the current debates and potential efforts to study and counter the phenomena of extreme right violence in a period when the rise of right-wing extremism is being witnessed across the globe. Against this backdrop, the violent radicalisation and extremism of individuals and groups belonging to the extreme right threaten to undermine and destabilize societies and democratic orders, leaving a research gap that has only started to be filled in recent years, but that is still quite wide when it comes to counter-terrorism approaches to extreme right violence. Learning from the past, and trying to avoid similar mistakes, this volume creates a much-needed space for open, honest, and ethical debate around countering extreme right violence, answering social and political calls to debate how to counter this kind of violence. This volume brings together a group of interdisciplinary scholars to contribute to national and international, academic and policy debates about countering extreme right violence from a critical perspective. Volume I focuses particularly on exploring how extreme right violence has been approached, narrated and made sense of in different spatial and temporal contexts, examining how political actors such as media and politicians portray the threat of and actual violence perpetrated by the extreme right, deconstructing current counter-terrorism approaches, and formulating a critical approach to researching extreme right violence. It will be of great interest to all students of terrorism studies, security studies, international relations, and political science in general. The chapters in this book were originally published in Critical Studies on Terrorism.

This volume is a timely contribution to the current debates and potential efforts to study and counter the phenomena of extreme right violence in a period when the rise of right-wing extremism is being witnessed across the globe. Against this backdrop, the violent radicalisation and extremism of individuals and groups belonging to the extreme right threaten to undermine and destabilize societies and democratic orders, leaving a research gap that has only started to be filled in recent years, but that is still quite wide when it comes to counter-terrorism approaches to extreme right violence. Learning from the past, and trying to avoid similar mistakes, this volume creates a much-needed space for open, honest, and ethical debate around countering extreme right violence, answering social and political calls to debate how to counter this kind of violence. This volume brings together a group of interdisciplinary scholars to contribute to national and international, academic and policy debates about countering extreme right violence from a critical perspective. Volume II focuses particularly on exploring how extreme right violence has been approached in different spatial and temporal contexts, examining how the criminal justice system has dealt with the threat of and actual violence perpetrated by the extreme right, deconstructing current counter-terrorism approaches from feminist and gender perspectives, and formulating a critical approach to countering extreme right violence. It will be of great interest to all students of terrorism studies, security studies, international relations, and political science in general. The chapters in this book were originally published in Critical Studies on Terrorism.

Bringing together established and emerging voices in Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS), this book offers fresh and dynamic reflections on CTS and envisages possible lines of future research and ways forward. The volume is structured in three sections. The first opens a space for intellectual engagement with other disciplines such as Sociology, Peace Studies, Critical Pedagogy, and Indigenous Studies. The second looks at topics that have not received much attention within CTS, such as silences in discourses, the politics of counting dead bodies, temporality or anarchism. The third presents ways of 'performing' CTS through research-based artistic performances and productions. Overall, the volume opens up a space for broadening and pushing CTS forward in new and imaginative ways. This book will be of interest to students of critical terrorism studies, critical security studies, sociology and International Relations in general.

Narrative, Political Violence and Social Change is a call for engaging actively and critically with the ontological, epistemological, and methodological implications of narrative in the study of political violence and terrorism. Building on a basic framework of three modes of narrative - as lens, as data, and as tool - the chapters in this book demonstrate how the study of political violence and terrorism benefits from narrative inquiry as an interdisciplinary endeavour, in particular as regards diverging perceptions of social reality, the meanings of belonging, and the human drive for change. They showcase the substantial advances that scholars have made in this field to date and identify promising avenues for further research. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Studies in Conflict & Terrorism.

Narrative, Political Violence and Social Change is a call for engaging actively and critically with the ontological, epistemological, and methodological implications of narrative in the study of political violence and terrorism. Building on a basic framework of three modes of narrative – as lens, as data, and as tool – the chapters in this book demonstrate how the study of political violence and terrorism benefits from narrative inquiry as an interdisciplinary endeavour, in particular as regards diverging perceptions of social reality, the meanings of belonging, and the human drive for change. They showcase the substantial advances that scholars have made in this field to date and identify promising avenues for further research. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Studies in Conflict & Terrorism.

An exploration of how political violence is constructed, this book presents the life stories of individuals once committed to political transformation through violent means in Portugal. Challenging simplistic conceptualisations about the actors of violence, this book examines issues of temporality, gender and interpersonal dynamics in the study of political violence. It is the first comprehensive case study of political violence in Portugal, based on the perspectives of former militants. These are individuals from different political spheres who became convinced that they could not be mere spectators of the circumstances of their times. For them, the only viable way of making a difference was through violent acts. Applying the Dialogical Self Theory to trace the identity positions underpinning their narratives, this book not only sheds light on radicalisation and deradicalisation processes at the individual level, but also on the meso- and macro-level contexts that instigate engagement with and encourage disengagement from armed organisations. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of critical terrorism studies, political violence, European history and security studies more generally.