Rebalancing the Agenda

ABSTRACT

In welcoming the recognition that victimization through terrorism is a significant factor in our thinking about terrorism, a case is made for greater engagement of Civil Society, through nongovernmental organizations, in the development of policy in this area. It argues for a rebalancing of policy toward the “passive victims” of terrorist activity, and a recognition that the lived experience of harm done by terrorism is not mitigated by either context or alleged justification. A case is also made for using the study of victimization as a focus for interdisciplinary work on terrorism, recognizing that expertise in this area lies both within and outwith government.

Notes

1. The preponderance of a limited range of disciplines in Terrorism research can be seen in the following. More than half the papers published in the first four volumes of the 2016 issue of the journal Terrorism and Political Violence had author attributions of Political Science, International Relations, or Sociology. The first four volumes of the 2010 issue contained a similar number. In contrast, a review of papers published within a similar date range in the journal Child Abuse and Neglect showed no dominant discipline, with contributions ranging across Health, Medicine, Psychology, and Social Sciences. They are different academic areas of course, and draw on different sources of knowledge; but the lack of interdisciplinarity seems to be striking.

2. The Cordoba counteroffensive is alleged to have been the maneuver that inspired this republican communiqué. From: Robert Stradling, The Irish and the Spanish Civil War 1936–1939 (Mandolin, Manchester University Press, 1999), p. 151.

3. For example, Akihiko Masuda, Matthew Donati, L. Ward Schaefer, and Mary L. Hill, “Terrorism as an Act-in-Context: A Contextual Behavioral Science Account,” in Max Taylor, Jason Roach, and Ken Pease, eds., Evolutionary Psychology and Terrorism (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016).

4. Eric Gans, “White Guilt, Past and Future,” Anthropoetics: the Journal of Generative Anthropology 12(2) (2007). Available at http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/ap1202/wg.htm (accessed 18 September 2016).

5. By “our” I am deliberately not specifying a country or context.