Terrorism Perspectives from the Behavioral and Social Sciences (2002) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
1. Clearing the Conceptual Air
1. Clearing the Conceptual Air
Pages 7-17
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From page 7... ...
156051. We intend to qualify this gloomy diagnosis by bringing behavioral and social science knowledge to bear on many aspects of contemporary terrorism.
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All these circumstances have dictated that the two panels (DBASSE and DARPA) did what was possible in consulting research directly on terrorism, but also went to different and related research topics, such as disaster studies, the literature on social movements, deterrence analysis, and some work on international economic and political relations.
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The aims of terrorist activities are to create, maximize, and continuously shift the parameters of uncertainty, confusion, insecurity, and fear. · The evolution of terrorism from World War II through the phases of colonial struggles, hostage-taking, hijacking, assassination, explosive bombing, and suicidal vehicle and airplane bombing shows a certain mercilessness in the perpetration of violence: any target, at any time, in any place, and by any I 10 TERRORISM: PERSPECTIVES FROM THE BEHAVIORAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
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These forces are the complex result of cultural definitions, historically generated hatrecis, international power relations, contemporary economic and social conditions, and doctrinal education. In the worstcase scenario, military defeat may intensify some of the forces generating terrorism.
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rely on a strategy of identifying relevant dimensions of terrorism, highlighting one or more of these according to its usefulness in unclerstanding a given problem and in the interest of maximizing flexibility of Responses to an obviously multifaceted phenomenon. We comment briefly on each of these ingredients.
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WORKING DEFINITION In these definitions there are recurring clefinitional characteristics: illegal use or threatened use of force or violence; an 1 14 TERRORISM: PERSPECTIVES FROM THE BEHAVIORAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES ,
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which are not (or, perhaps better, who would call each terrorism and who would deny it) : · British and American firebombing of Dresden in World War II · Dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II · Sherman's march through Georgia during the American Civil War · Palestinian suicide bombing · Israeli punitive strikes on Palestinians · Lebanese Phalangist militia attacks on Muslims · The Bay of Pigs ~ CLEARING THE CONCEPTUAL AIR 15
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What 16 TERRORISM: PERSPECTIVES FROM THE BEHAVIORAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
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From page 17... ...
The panel sees several potential advantages to this kind of dimensional thinking: it offers a more open-ended approach to the range and complexity of terrorist behavior than a single, fixed definition; it provides an avenue for disentangling the problems of meaning we have identified; and it provides the basis for developing a systematic comparative analysis of different manifestations of terrorism.
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