This chapter addresses the politics of development and its relation to security. It highlights how the mobilization of security via development may aim to address forms of political violence but can also (re)produce them. The chapter specifically poses the questions: ‘Security for whom and from what?’ and ‘Security when and where?’ By posing these questions, it draws attention to how security is mobilized in the crafting and enactment of development policies, or security-development/peacebuilding initiatives, and the security logics that underpin them. This helps render visible the hierarchies these logics reproduce, the forms of violence they enable, and the forms of knowledge that they privilege.
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12. Securing development; developing security?
Maria Stern
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2. What Are Terrorism Studies?
Tim Wilson
This chapter gives a basic overview of the field of terrorism studies. It looks at attempts to define the boundaries of terrorism as a subject. It traces the evolution of orthodox terrorism studies since the 1970s. The term terrorism was first coined during the French Revolution. Terrorism sparks powerful images of sudden, disruptive, and system-shaking political violence. The academic study of terrorism as it exists now reflects the shifting concerns of both governments and the public. Scolarship on terrorism has never been richer and more diverse than it is now. New research opportunties always raise new challenges so it will be interesting to see the field of terrorism studies evolve even further in the future.
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8. Terrorism and asymmetric conflicts
Christian Olsson
This chapter assesses the question of ‘security for what purpose?’ in asymmetric conflicts where rival political-military organizations, typically a government and a clandestine group, compete to institute and enforce a socio-political order. Terrorism and the asymmetric use of violence are often understood to pose specific kinds of security challenges that distinguish them from other forms of political violence like war. The chapter highlights why parties to these conflicts often come to threaten individuals—be it through indiscriminate repression or clandestine political violence. It also shows that the protagonists of such conflicts generally seek to define security in terms of the stability of their own socio-political order, thus potentially increasing levels of violence. It is in the context of such conflicts that the chapter discusses the concepts of terrorism and counterterrorism.
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17. Gender
Paul Kirby
This chapter examines the power of gender in global politics. It considers the different ways in which gender shapes world politics today, whether men dominate global politics at the expense of women, and whether international—and globalized—gender norms should be radically changed, and if so, how. The chapter also discusses sex and gender in international perspective, along with global gender relations and the gendering of global politics, global security, and the global economy. The first case study in this chapter considers the Kurdish Yekîneyên Parastine Jin (Women's Protection Units) and the role of women in political violence. The second case study examines neo-slavery and care labour in Asia.
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27. Disengagement and Deradicalization Programmes
Sarah Marsden
This chapter explores the increasing significance of disengagement and de-radicalization programmes in countering terrorism. It looks at initiatives supporting a transition away from militancy. Deradicalization can be defined as the psychological and sociological attitude change wherein an individual no longer feels personally responsible for progressing a political agenda through violence. Meanwhile, disengagement is the behavioural process that sees an individual cease involvement in political violence. The chapter discusses the history and evolution of deradicalization interventions before tackling the empirical evidence on deradicalization. Deradicalization programmes have become an important part of many states' counter-terrorism efforts. Examples here include Norway and Sweden.
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14. Property, extraction, and accumulation
Caitlin Ryan
This chapter explores the political violence steeped in the relations between property, extraction, and accumulation by considering the questions: ‘Security for what purpose?’ and ‘Security at whose expense?’ Security is often related to property as a claim to the ‘right’ of states, companies, and individuals to have security of property. The purpose of security is thus assumed to ensure a right to maintain property, and in particular, to extract or accumulate value from it. In this sense, security is often mobilized to protect existing property rights and/or the security of some form of property itself. Through examples of plantations and mines, the chapter demonstrates how property shows how security is mobilized, and how capital has historically depended on the protection of ‘property rights’ not only through appeals to a ‘rule of law’ but also through violence.
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18. Environment
Madeleine Fagan
This chapter reflects on the implications of treating the environmental crisis as a security issue. It engages directly with the questions: Security for whom, where, and at whose expense? By exploring these questions, the chapter demonstrates how claims about the environment and security make visible, and securable, particular worlds while obscuring others, and rendering them insecure. It then considers three approaches to environment and security: early links between the environment and security which focused on how environmental issues impacted on the traditional concerns of security such as violent conflict, the state, and national security; the human security perspective; and the ecological security approach. Ultimately, we can see how attempts to secure the environment are connected to symbolic violence that generates other forms of political violence.
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4. Political violence
This chapter presents a conceptual framework that identifies different forms of violence, their relation to security, and their political dimensions. It focuses on four types of violence: physical, psychological, material, and symbolic. To determine the potential political dimensions of violence, the chapter explores actors, intentions, structures, and its presence within socio-political orders. Security seeks to address something that an authority has determined to be a threat or under threat. In this context, violence can be deemed political when it is legitimized and authorized from a security claim, as well as when it is an effect of a security mobilization that has emerged from a security claim. Two key questions then arise. Firstly, when is violence legitimate? Secondly, who has the authority to exercise violence legitimately within a given socio-political order? The chapter concludes that understanding how violence emerges from security mobilizations is important to understanding security.
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14. Can States Be Terrorists?
Kieran McConaghy
This chapter discusses how states use political violence and asks whether this sort of action could be considered terrorism or not. It lists the core points of study related to state acts of violence. These include instances of threatened acts of violence, state approval of violent acts, and the psychological impact of state and non-state acts of violence. State terrorism has become marginalized because the focus has been primarily on certain types of non-state political violence. States frequently sponsor or assist violent groups internationally when such acts serve their foreign policy objectives. The chapter examines examples of governments taking advantage of state terrorism. This tends to happen in totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, but also with colonial powers and liberal democracies too. The chapter clarifies how an accurate definition of terrorism is dependent on intent, which is difficult to determine for state and non-state actors.
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4. Conceptualizations of Terrorism
Anthony Richards
This chapter looks into various conceptualizations of terrorism. Most terrorism scholars view terrorism as a distinctive phenomenon when compared with other forms of political violence. Terrorism is most often defined as the use of violence for the purpose of generating a psychological impact beyond the immediate victims or any sort of political motive. However, how to accurately define terrorism has long been the subject of contentious debates both within policy-making and the terrorism studies literature of the past fifty years. The chapter then lists the levels of analysing terrorism. These are: definition, conceptualization, and pejorative labeling. It notes how the psychological impact and terrorism is viewed as fundamental in understanding terrorism.
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28. Victims of Terrorism and Political Violence
Orla Lynch and Carmel Joyce
This chapter focuses on victims of terrorism and political violence. Psychological and criminological research on victimhood challenges the portrayal of victims as rand and unlucky targets of indiscriminate violence. Research on victims is often concerned with the psychological impact of violence and this results often in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The chapter also highlights how victims of terrorism often become public victims and are politicized in the process. It also looks at the hierarchy of victimhood, the Just World Hypothesis, characteristics of an ideal victim, and differences between good and bad victims.
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6. The Social Science of Political Violence
Stefan Malthaner, Donatella della Porta, and Lorenzo Bosi
This chapter examines the concept of political violence. Political violence is analysed through the process of radicalization, escalation, transformation, and disengagement resulting from interactions between multiple actors. The chapter explains how processual approaches offer a new way of trying to understand dynamic and continuously changing phenomena. Using processual approaches means taking on a critique of political violence explanations as an effect of socio-economic structural conditions, individual predispositions, or ideologies. The chapter also looks at the social movement theory, political opportunity structure approaches, and resource mobilization theory as alternative ways to study political violence. Appreciating continuity, interaction, context, and contingency are vital in understanding political violence.
