A case against ‘Critical Terrorism Studies’

Abstract

Keywords:

• terrorism
• studies
• critical
• orthodox

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Nick Rengger, Torsten Michel, Mia Bloom, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Any errors or omissions are the authors' own.

Notes

1. In this sense, the authors are more sympathetic to the original purposes of the Frankfurt School approach to critical theory than to more modern forms of critical theory that focus less on uncovering the foundations of thought than on perpetual imminent critique (see, in particular, Held 1980, and Devetak 1996).

2. One of the charges made by CTS scholars is that terrorism studies remains ‘positivist’. This critique is an overstatement because many terrorism scholars do not believe that scientific method was, or is, the only route to knowledge, nor do they have a reductionist view of the social or political world. It is more proper to say that terrorism studies was dominated by empiricists, but not necessarily positivists.

3. Note that a special section on Mueller's argument, including several responses by prominent scholars, was included in a mainstream journal, Terrorism and Political Violence, in 2005.

4. This includes Paul Wilkinson, most notably, given how proponents of CTS most readily personify him as representative of the ‘orthodoxy’. See also the final chapter in Bloom (2005); and Arreguin-Toft (2002).

5. For the subsequent argument made for ‘sensible foreign policy’, see also Thaddeus Jackson and Kaufman (2007).

6. For a good discussion of the emancipatory aspect of critical theory, see also Linklater (2001).

7. This is, of course, tied into the basic observation that commitments to emancipatory action (such as Marxist–Leninist ideology) have often backfired to generate anti-democratic outcomes and human rights abuses.

8. For two outstanding examples, see Bj⊘rgo (2005) and Victoroff (2006).

9. See, in particular, the discussions developed by Ronald Crelinsten and others in Wilkinson and Stewart (1986); also the discussions in Silke (2004).

10. Notable examples include Sageman (2004), Lia (2005) and Alonso (2006).