On the future of critical terrorism studies: A response to Richard Jackson's minimal foundationalist redefinition of terrorism

Abstract

Recently, Jackson offered a minimally foundationalist, contingent redefinition of terrorism. This response article raises four main concerns with Jackson's attempted redefinition. The concerns in short are: (1) the redefinition of terrorism is voiced from a narrow methodological perspective that unduly limits the scope of possible ways to study terrorism in a systematic, critical mode; (2) it reifies terrorism as a form of extraordinary violence, which is problematic because it leads researchers to assume what could be explained and it leads researchers to miss salient and significant empirical traces of terrorism and counter-terrorism; (3) the redefinition of terrorism and the particular methodological stance it works from are insufficiently reflexive for a completely constructivist approach to terrorism studies; (4) it is less useful at organizing terrorism studies than a systematic clarification of the ontological and epistemological frameworks available to scholars studying terrorism.

Keywords:

• critical terrorism studies
• constructivism
• methodology
• reflexivity
• terrorism as practice

Acknowledgements

I would like to give special thanks to Dr Priya Dixit for her thoughtful comments on this response article, to Dr Justin Sinclair for being very interested in hearing my response, and to the anonymous reviewers.

Notes

‘Rejectionists argue that the term [terrorism] should be abandoned in academic research because it is now too ideologically tainted to be used as the basis for objective or rigorous research … and in any case, it is not necessary for rigorous research’ (Jackson, 2011, p. 2). ‘Reformists … suggest that the term can be retained as a useful analytical concept, but only if a consensus is achieved on its definition, and if the term is applied consistency by scholars, particular in terms of applicability to the actions of states’ (Jackson, 2011, pp. 2–3).

Following Patrick Thaddeus Jackson (2008) and Stump and Dixit (2011), it is useful to point out that there is a difference between my treatment of ontology and that of critical realist like Jonathan Joseph (2009) and, increasingly it seems, Richard Jackson. As a critical realist, Joseph and apparently Richard Jackson treat ontology as a reference to the nature of the object of study. In contrast, I use ontology to indicate the relation one presumes between their selves and the object of study.

Stump and Dixit argued that Joseph's article presented an illustrative example of a dualist methodological stance (2011).

Speaking of Jackson's approach to CTS, Joseph suggested that he should ‘toughen it up’ (Joseph, 2009, p. 97) by toning back the interpretivist, constructivist and poststructuralist emphasis and ‘recognizing that what we are trying to understand has a real and meaningful existence that is open to investigation’ (Joseph, 2009, p. 95).