introduction: the case for critical terrorism studies
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his symposium emerged as a response to three recent developments in the field of terrorism studies. The first development has been the tremendous growth in terrorismrelated research and teaching activities since the attacks of 11 September 2001. Since then, terrorism studies has been transformed from a minor subfield of security studies to a large stand-alone field with its own dedicated journals, research centres, leading scholars and experts, research funding opportunities, conferences and university study programmes. As a consequence, it is now one of the fastest expanding areas of research in the Western academic world, with literally thousands of new books and articles published over the past few years, significant investment in terrorism-related research projects and increasing numbers of postgraduate dissertations and undergraduate students. A second concurrent development has been a growing dissatisfaction with the state of the field and its voluminous output by senior scholars, security practitioners and sections of the public. As detailed in the papers that follow, a number of authoritative scholarly reviews
have noted that much of what passes for terrorism research lacks rigorous theories and concepts, is based primarily on secondary information, lacks historical context and is heavily biased towards Western and state-centric perspectives. Related to this, it is possible to discern a growing and deep-seated unease about the overall lack of progress in the ‘war on terror’ and the direction of domestic counter-terrorism policies – policies that are to a large degree based on orthodox terrorism studies research. The third development has been the increased visibility of a coterie of explicitly ‘critical’ terrorism studies scholars, publications, doctoral research projects and teaching programmes. The growing level of organisation and activity of this movement can be seen in a number of specific events. In early 2006, a working group on Critical Studies on Terrorism (CSTWG) was formally established within the British International Studies Association (BISA) to provide a network for critically oriented scholars and a focus for research activities; by 2007, it had more than sixty members from half a dozen countries. In October 2006, a conference entitled ‘Is it Time for a Critical Terrorism Studies?’ was european political science: 6 2007
(225 – 227) & 2007 European Consortium for Political Research. 1680-4333/07 $30 www.palgrave-journals.com/eps
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held in Manchester; jointly sponsored by CSTWG and the Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Contemporary Political Violence (CSRV), the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, the meeting brought together around fifty scholars from the UK, Europe and North America. Panels on a similar theme were held at the December 2006 annual BISA conference and the March 2007 International Studies Association (ISA) annual convention in Chicago; further panels and papers on critical terrorism studies are being prepared for the 2007 American Political Science Association
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