About a week ago I published a piece with the International Relations and Security Network (ISN) on the analytical and political utility (or lack thereof) of the concept of terrorism. I cannot reproduce it here in full for Duck readers because the ISN owns it. But, since I think the topic might be of interest to readers, here is a taste of what I argue in hopes of prompting a discussion:
With high-profile incidents of political violence continuing to make headlines, the time has come to question the labeling of these events as ‘terrorism.’ While politically or ideologically motivated violence remains all too real, approaching events such as these through the framework of ‘terrorism’ does little to help academics or policymakers understand or prevent them. Fourteen years into the Global War on Terror, the political and security baggage that accompanies the label ‘terrorism’ may even undermine such efforts. This is because the term terrorism creates the false impression that the actions it describes represent a special or unique phenomenon. Because this confusion impedes our ability to understand politically motivated violence as part of broader social and political systems, the costs of continuing to use the concept of terrorism outweigh the benefits. The simplest solution to this problem would be for scholars and policymakers alike to jettison the term…
Here, here. I have much the same feelings with ‘piracy’ in my own work.
I agree terrorism is a contested and highly politicized definition. I would argue that much of what gets labeled as terrorism is best labeled as some other form of political violence (repression or warfare … especially guerrilla warfare). In popular discourse terrorism is close to being political violence that we disapprove of … a most unhelpful concept.
That said, I think terrorism can be a useful concept. I tend to think of terrorism as political violence that is below the level of warfare and distinct from state repression (this isn’t to say states cannot engage in terrorism or sponsor it … they can). While you are certainly correct that important parallels can be draw across different types of political violence, lumping all political violence into one bundle risks missing distinctions as well. For instance, are riots really best understood using theories of warfare? Should we make no distinctions between conventional and guerrilla warfare or between genocide and other political violence against civilians? The tactics and strategies of say Stalin, Ho Chi Minh, and Action Directe while all Marxists were quite different and reflected in large part the level of power relative to their opponents that those groups and individuals had (indeed Stalin’s actions changed as he gained power).
I think you have a good point Zachary regarding collapsing everything down into ‘political violence’ because there are important analytical and substantive distinctions to be made within that broad category. While I obviously take a provocative position in the ISN piece, it may be that from an analytical perspective that it is useful to identify terrorism as a unique social thing, or maybe as you suggest as a particular kind of tactic (although distinguishing it as a tactic would still remove a lot of what constitutes terrorism studies into a bigger political violence research agenda). But I think terrorism studies scholars need to do a better job justifying terrorism-as-social-thing if they want to keep it as such (again, less burden for terrorism-as-tactic, although maybe a name change is then in order). The bigger problem for scholars IMHO is the political meaning that attaches to ‘terrorism’.
I agree that the negative connotation attached to terrorism makes the term problematic, but the term is out there and commonly used. I’m not sure a new term would do anything other than add to the confusion. I suspect it would lead to scholarly jargon being mismatched with popular discourse without necessarily doing anything to improve the quality of that popular discourse. Basically, I think we are stuck with the term and it is more useful to debate and carefully think about what the term means rather than trying to invent a new term.
Thanks for sharing this! Could you send me an email when you get a chance? I couldn’t find your contact info – thanks!
Lily
lilyst 22 at gmail
Hi Lily,
You can reach me at jarrod.hayes at gatech.edu
I wanted to push you in the opposite direction that Zachary did. Why ‘political’ violence, especially when the recognition of a political project behind violence is its often produced by power. For instance, pirates in the Gulf of Aden are treated as criminals and those not political actors. But they claim to be the de facto Somali Coast Guard and there have been some locally powerful political groups that formed around piracy. IN this case whether or not piracy is political is contested.
I would wonder why not just start with violence (though I realize that you could keep challenging ‘all the way down’) and then make new distinctions from there if you don’t find political/non-political, public/private, state/non-state, or ‘action’ based (i.e. terrorism, etc.) distinctions.
Either way, I would see your call to be a necessary move here.
I agree that whether a group acting primarily out of criminal, political, or mixed motives is often important, contentious, unclear, and that the label decided upon may have more to do with politics than the underlying motives of the group.
And of course, the same act of violence can be seen without contradiction as both decidedly political and criminal (war crimes spring immediately to mind).