Abstract
The 9/11 attacks stimulated an unprecedented academic interest in the study of terrorism; bringing a range of new disciplinary perspectives, theoretical frameworks and empirical tools to the subject. Within a broad social science perspective, this paper seeks to draw on these cross-disciplinary resources to understand pre-attack terrorist activities. In doing so, the paper first reviews some of the key themes relating to the study of terrorism including (but not restricted to) empirical values, the duplication of knowledge, points of consensus, and the focus on individual and deterministic features. The paper then examines conceptualizations of ‘terrorism as a process’ as they relates to pre-attack activities and considers current analyses relating to this issue. Here, temporal features of attack cycles are particularly prominent. The third area of analysis draws from a range of social science disciplines – including environmental psychology, human geography, sociology and criminology – to investigate the prospects of furnishing these accounts with spatial detail. These discussions are organized by a number of overarching arguments. These include: the importance of inter-relationships between counter-terrorism practice and precise understandings of terrorist action; and of exercising caution over deterministic pathways of action and accounts that focus too heavily on the individual level of action.
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Notes
Although constraints are also clearly exerted within these forms of terrorism. Amongst other examples, this is evinced in the now famous disagreement between Ayman Zawahiri and Abu Musab Zarqawi over the latter’s targeting of Iraqi Shia.
Al Qaeda’s plot to conduct a small-arms ‘Mumbai style’ attack across European cities in September 2010 is an example of such mutability.
However, one feature that is often overlooked in explanations of why more affluent individuals engage in suicide terrorism is that they are selected. This is based on the assumption by their handlers that, say, if a doctor commits a suicide mission, it will have more resonance than if it was carried out by an unskilled labourer (see Zoraoya 2002; Pape 2005).
The events surrounding the attack have also been afforded a mythical status by some. In one dramatic version of events, the RAF not only informed Herrhausen of their intention to murder him, they also told him the date this would happen (unattributable source). Despite numerous efforts, however, the author has been unable to locate any further evidence to independently corroborate this version of events. Such stories thus probably say more about the cultural resonance of the attack than the details of its commission.
The sociologist Ulrich Beck (1992) also argues that a self-perpetuating process is at play here. By generating categories of risk we identify additional threats, which, in turn, also become categorised and the cycle is repeated in an infinite loop.
It is important to note that such policing strategies are not solely aimed at catching potential terrorists ‘in the act’. They also service an intelligence-gathering function although, as Hillyard (1993) notes in relation to the policing of Britain’s Irish minorities, such approaches retain their controversy.
At the time of writing (July 2011), issues around the procurement of large quantities of fertilizer have again come to the fore with the allegation that Anders Breivik, arrested on suspicion of planting a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device in the centre of Oslo before embarking on a spree killing in Utoeya, had previously procured six tons of fertilizer.
I am grateful to Andrew Silke for drawing my attention to this research and its relevance to the context of terrorist stress (stated in personal communication).
Whilst social scientists may find much to critique in Grossman’s work – including the extremely crude attempts at cerebral anatomy, uncritical assertions of links between popular culture and violence unburdened by any evidence, and hysterical cri de coeurs about the ‘survival of our civilization’ – in fairness, the central argument and overarching focus of his research on ‘conditioning’ bears scrutiny and constitutes a contribution to the field.
Also interesting here is the argument that the July 7th bombers did not appear to ‘aim’ their attacks at the point of detonation. As Swain (2006) points out, the bombers did not select their targets to maximize casualties (for example selecting the most crowded carriages typically towards the centre of trains, or choosing those at the ends of each train to increase the chances of people remaining trapped in the tunnels). Instead, the bombers appeared to select those carriages that were nearest their entrance onto the platform.
See McGrath (2004) for the application of Goffman’s notion of ‘performativity’ to those under surveillance.
Although a high level of performativity was evident in earlier Al Qaeda attacks. For example, Ronczkowski (2007) notes that one suspect had rammed a jersey barrier on the east perimeter of the US Marines compound in the months before the 1996 Khobar Towers attack in Saudi Arabia.
As Burke (2007) correctly argues, after 9/11 al Qaeda operations shifted in emphasis towards quantity over ‘quality’.
Due to the different sizes and configurations of terrorist groups (for example, left wing groups are generally larger than right wing groups, see Fussey 2007), variance is inevitable, however.
The concept of ‘affect’ in social science is distinct to that of emotion. Although it is a contested concept, it generally differs from emotion in two key respects. First it refers to the capacity to ‘relate’ to things. Second, ‘affect’ is not necessarily something that resides within the individual or an object, but can exist in a space between them (see inter alia Ibid.). Such contemporary exchanges over the boundaries of ‘subject’ and ‘object’ are drawn from long running debates in philosophy, extending at least as far as Descartes’ seventeenth century delineation of ‘mind’ and ‘matter’ (and, as a corollary, subject and object) and later contested via Hegel’s brand of Absolute Idealism.
Indeed, as Adey points out, there is a tradition within many areas of design that explore the emotional and affective impacts of specific products or environments. In Norman’s (2004) now classic text Emotional Design, for example, the author argues that we respond to physical products or settings on visceral, behavioural and reflective levels.
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Acknowledgement
This research is conducted as part of the ‘Shades of Grey – Towards a Science of Interventions for Eliciting and Detecting Notable Behaviors’ project (EPSRC reference: EP/H02302X/1).
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Research for this paper was funded by the EPSRC under EPHO230LX/1 Shades of Grey – Detecting Terrorism at a Distance. The author would like to acknowledge the EPSRC for their valued support.
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Fussey, P. Eternal Return? Social Science Perspectives of ‘Upstream’ Terrorist Activities. J Police Crim Psych 28, 102–114 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-013-9124-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-013-9124-z