This book explores and inquiries into the interrelation between normativity and Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS) from a wide range of critical views. The volume draws together authors with very different positions and understandings of normativity and policy-implementations in relation to countering terrorism, to offer the reader a wide range of perspectives and views on this topic. As such, the book is aimed at interrogating the concept of normativity in CTS from a wide range of theoretical angles but also at incorporating within the CTS’ agenda new debates and critiques. In its chapters, the book covers debates that go from more philosophical, theoretical, and ethical discussions to questions revolving around the importance and need of being policy-relevant for CTS scholars. All in all, this volume brings together chapters joining the debate on CTS’ main theoretical tenants and the role of critical scholars in counter-terrorism and prevention policies. Covering a broad spectrum of approaches and perspectives, authors in this book give different answers to central questions such as: how can we rethink CTS? What is the role of the critical terrorism studies community in countering terrorism? The chapters in this book were originally published in the journal, Critical Studies on Terrorism.

This book explores and inquiries into the interrelation between normativity and Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS) from a wide range of critical views. The volume draws together authors with very different positions and understandings of normativity and policy-implementations in relation to countering terrorism, to offer the reader a wide range of perspectives and views on this topic. As such, the book is aimed at interrogating the concept of normativity in CTS from a wide range of theoretical angles but also at incorporating within the CTS’ agenda new debates and critiques. In its chapters, the book covers debates that go from more philosophical, theoretical, and ethical discussions to questions revolving around the importance and need of being policy-relevant for CTS scholars. All in all, this volume brings together chapters joining the debate on CTS’ main theoretical tenants and the role of critical scholars in counter-terrorism and prevention policies. Covering a broad spectrum of approaches and perspectives, authors in this book give different answers to central questions such as: how can we rethink CTS? What is the role of the critical terrorism studies community in countering terrorism? The chapters in this book were originally published in the journal, 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.

This book explores how the Chinese government reasserts its control and management of public spaces as part of its overall counter-terrorism strategy. The work focuses primarily on the banal and alternative forms that China’s ‘war on terror’ takes: the everyday, non-military, socio-economic and spatio-material. It presents three different cases of control associated with the state’s effort to manage material, social and digital public spaces as remedies to terrorism and ethnic unrest in China: the redevelopment project of Kashgar—the ‘home’ of Uyghur culture—from 2001 to 2017; the forging of local partnerships with potential agents (i.e. the local cadres and imams in Xinjiang) as part of the process of implementing counter-terrorism policies; and an online campaign about international terrorism that appeared on Sina Weibo. Using securitization theory as a theoretical framework, the book establishes links between human geography and critical security studies and advances the understanding of non-confrontational forms of resistance in China. It also focuses attention on the binary relationship between the securitizing agency of the state and the counter-securitization agency of ‘terrorists’, while also exploring the manner in which other societal forces interact with these processes. This book will be of interest to students of critical terrorism studies, Chinese studies, human geography, and security studies.

This book traces the evolution of the UN Security Council’s actions against terrorism and extremism. The work examines the progression of the UN Security Council’s fight against international terrorism and its development of practices to prevent radicalisation and extremism. It also looks at the consequences of these processes and how they have deeply moulded global counter-terrorism. The book looks at the discursive construction of a global threat and tracks how this construction evolved in relation to the Council’s establishment of legal practices and bodies, and by its Members’ discourses. It argues that the very specific definition the Council provided on international terrorism in the 2000s is profoundly shaped by global hegemonies, relations of power shaping the international community, and its own identity. To demonstrate this, it offers a long genealogical perspective of the structure of the UN since the 1930s and then focuses specifically on the developments taking place in the 2000s. The book thus looks at the Security Council’s fight against international terrorism as a global, globalised, and globalising enterprise. This book will be of much interest to students of critical terrorism studies, security studies, global governance, and International Relations.

This volume brings together interviews with leading scholars to discuss some of the most important issues associated with radicalization, violent extremism and terrorism. The overall aim of these interviews is to move beyond the ‘conventional wisdom’ over radicalization and violent extremism best represented by many of its well-known slogans, metaphors, aphorisms alongside various other thought-terminating clichés. A vast range of topics are tackled in these conversations, including issues as diverse as the genealogy of radicalization and violent extremism, the rhetoric of emergency politics (’the language of fear’), the ethics of securitization, mutual radicalization, the challenges arising out of the relationship between cognitive and behavioural radicalization, Islamism bias in research on radicalization, the ethics of espionage (as an integral element of the ‘war on terror’), the epistemic dimension of radicalization, the application of the just war conceptual framework to terrorism, and the ethics of exceptional means when addressing security-related issues, to name a few. The unifying assumption of the interviews in the volume is the complex nature of radicalization, violent extremism and conflicting diversity, as well as their interwoven relationship. While radicalization has become one of the ‘great buzzwords’ of the intelligence and security ‘industry’, pleas for its very abandonment as a useful analytical category have also started to emerge. This book will be of much interest to students of terrorism studies, radicalisation, violent extremism, security studies and International Relations, in general.

This book offers an East-West comparative analysis of mediatised terrorism. This is the first country-specific analysis of the mediatisation of terrorism, with Pakistan and Australia representing the two worlds, respectively. Caught up in the ‘9/11 effect’, Australia is known for its anti-terror ‘hyper-legislation’, despite the implausible nature of the threat. In contrast, Pakistan is plagued by terrorism, yet the military establishment favours a duplicitous policy of fighting militant groups selectively. To understand how the two diverse cultural sites, with their very different experiences of terrorism, make sense of this unpredictable threat, the book uses Beck’s World Risk Society theory as a conceptual framework to examine the production and construction of news narratives around the risk of terrorism in both countries through textual analysis of local news stories and in-depth interviews with Australian and Pakistani journalists. Narratives about ‘global terrorism’ are mostly ‘Western’, with fear of its impact on ‘Western’ democracy and civilisation. This book aims to fill the gap and present a nuanced understanding of global terrorism by examining the characteristics of the phenomenon in a Western as well as an Eastern location and the ways in which the risk of terrorism is being played out in the two worlds. This book will be of much interest to students of critical terrorism studies, media studies, Asia-Pacific politics, and International Relations.

Asking vital questions concerning the future directions of terrorism research, this topical Research Agenda dives into the current state, emerging methodologies and key trends of this emotive and controversial field.

This book reveals how counterterrorism discourses and practices became the main tool of a systematic violation of human rights in Egypt after the Arab Uprising. It examines how the civic and democratic uprising in Egypt turned into robust authoritarianism under the pretence of counterterrorism and the ‘war on terror’. By interrogating Egypt’s counterterrorism legislation, the book identifies a correlation between counterterrorism narratives and the systemic violation of human rights. It examines the construction of a national security state that has little tolerance for dissent, political debate or the questioning of official policy, and how the anti-terrorism measures undertaken are actually anti-democracy strategies. The book also traces 150 years of Egyptian counterterrorism and counterinsurgency discourse, and analyses how this links with these practices of human rights assaults. By investigating how this discourse constructs and reproduces knowledge and meaning about terrorism and counterterrorism practices in Egypt, the book highlights how the government legitimises these violations against the population in the interests of the ruling elite. This book will be of much interest to students of terrorism studies, critical terrorism studies, discourse theory, Middle Eastern politics, decoloniality, and International Relations.

Academic studies of ‘terrorism’ grew exponentially in number after the September 11 attacks. The problem was that much of this work of ‘orthodox’ terrorism studies was biased, often shoddily researched and was too closely identified with the power centres of Western states. Its denizens were often former and sometimes current officials or officers in the military, intelligence services or the security industry or were funded by them. In response the project of Critical Terrorism Studies was intended to give a more rounded account of political violence in the world. It focuses on neglected issues like state terrorism, Western counterinsurgency, propaganda and misinformation. More than a decade since the founding of the critical project, this book asks what has been learned. It showcases leading examples of critical terrorism studies and presents an agenda for the expansion of an evidence-based approach to political violence and terrorism. With chapters by leading authorities such as Joseba Zulaika, Michael Stohl, Mary Hickman and Richard Jackson, the book evaluates how far the critical project has come and where it is going next. This book was published as a special issue of Critical Studies on Terrorism.