(2016) 'Terrorism and Peace Studies' in Richard Jackson (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Critical Terrorism Studies, Abingdon: Routledge, 298-308 (original) (raw)
Related papers
Critical Studies on Terrorism, 2013
The articles in this special issue are drawn from papers presented at a conference titled Terrorism and Peace and Conflict Studies: Investigating the Crossroad. The conference was organised by the Conflict Analysis Research Centre of the University of Kent and the Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group of the British International Studies Association, and was held at the University of Kent from 10 to 11 September 2012. The conference aimed to highlight and explore the empirical, methodological, ontological and epistemological points of interjection of the two fields through the engagement of scholars, postgraduate students, national and international policy and civil society actors. The articles in this issue reflect those aims.
Oxford Handbook of Peacebuilding, Statebuilding and Peace Formation, 2020
This chapter examines the relationship between Terrorism Studies (and the practice(s) of counter-terrorism), and Peace Studies (and the practice(s) of peacebuilding). The chapter seeks to uncover the political implications of the conceptualisations of both 'terrorism' and 'peace' in order to then evaluate how peace was sought (or not) to be built in terrorist conflicts. A brief chronology of long-established approaches in each field uncovers the basic deficiencies with which these two concepts have been dealt with by both academics and practitioners, resulting in a shared definition of objectives: counter-terrorism's preoccupation with the annihilation of terrorists, and peacebuilding's anxiety with domination and imposition-resulting in both of them failing to provide anything other than a victor's peace. The emergence of more critical approaches in both fields have begun rectifying those understandings but more daring epistemological and methodological steps need to be undertaken. The chapter concludes by identifying some of the obstacles and limitations facing these more recent approaches and tries to identify the scope of future research.
2012
Approaches to terrorism and peacebuilding have a complex relationship with each other, which may be explained according to four categories outlined in this article. These range from blocking each others’ aims, nullifying terrorism, supporting a very limited, or a broader peace process. Each of these categories has implications for the inclusion and reconciliation of a wide range of actors and the hybrid nature of the emerging peace. This relates to the critical approach of using theory to create emancipatory forms of peace, which is used as a basis for the examination of the production of hybridity via the interaction of approaches to terrorism and peacebuilding in five cases in this article. These include Sri Lanka, Kashmir, the Middle East, Nepal, and Northern Ireland. We argue that “post-liberal” possibilities for a hybrid form of peace (which are inherent in such conflicts) offer a “post-terrorist” potential for peace processes.
2014
...A critical study of terrorism requires the use of an intentional methodology that prioritises transparency, repeatability and the analysis of primary source data, especially that which documents political violence from non-state perspectives. To teach students to investigate terrorism scientifically is in itself a radical departure from traditionalist counterterrorism approaches found in International Relations, Political Science, Criminology and other realist, defence-centric fields. In order to allow new understandings of violent phenomena to emerge, a critical methodology can include several features. First, it should begin from an understanding of violence as positional, subjective and a political formation of power. Violence can be in the form of structural inequality – such as the denial of citizenship or autonomy for a people – or violence can be the destruction of property for political purposes – such as the bombing of a bank or the sabotage of a pipeline. Not all state-sanctioned violence is ethical, logical, legal and just, and not all non-state violence is barbarous, insane, illegal and foolish...
A case against 'Critical Terrorism Studies'
Critical Studies on Terrorism, 2008
This paper presents a case against the current formulation of ‘Critical Terrorism Studies’ (CTS). We will examine some of the core features of CTS, and in doing so identify what we suggest are mistaken assumptions about the nature and extent of contemporary research on terrorism. Our case against the current formulation of CTS is predicated on the view that aspects of its research programme are based on a superficial reading of the current literature that creates an image of the field of study unrecognizable to scholars working within it. As a result, the characterization of terrorism studies implicit in much of the current CTS work is not representative of the existing breadth of research activity in this field. The concluding assertions are that while the concerns that might have initially given rise to CTS are to be lauded (though these concerns are not exclusive to it), what has emerged as explicitly ‘critical’ terrorism studies in fact shares the concerns of many ‘tradi- tional’ terrorism scholars, and that in particular the claims to novelty or to a distinctively critical focus are exaggerated or misplaced.
The Spaces and Faces of Critical Terrorism Studies
Security Dialogue, 2009
This article explores the burgeoning academic interest in establishing a critical terrorism studies research programme. It begins by reviewing the debates over definition, causation and response that still dominate mainstream discussions of terrorism. The analytical and normative limitations of these debates, it argues, open considerable space for the emergence of a critically oriented body of literature. A second section then explores two distinct efforts at overcoming these limitations: the broadening and interpretivist faces of critical terrorism studies. The broadening face refers to attempts to expand our understanding of terrorism beyond non-state violence alone, while the interpretivist face comprises critical explorations of terror in image and narrative. Although each of these approaches offers scholars a more engaged role than the problem-solving orientation of the mainstream debates, the article argues that only the interpretivist face is capable of addressing their analytical limitations. The article concludes by calling for further attention to the notion of critique within the relevant critical literature.