This volume examines the rationale, effectiveness and consequences of counter terrorism practices from a range of perspectives and cases. The book critically interrogates contemporary counter-terrorism powers from military campaigns and repression through to the prosecution of terrorist suspects, counter-terrorism policing, counter-radicalisation programmes, and the proscription of terrorist organisations. Drawing on a range of timely and important case studies from around the world including the UK, Sri Lanka, Spain, Canada, Australia and the USA, its chapters explore the impacts of counter-terrorism on individuals, communities, and political processes. The book focuses on three questions of vital importance to any assessment of counter-terrorism. First, what do counter-terrorism strategies seek to achieve? Second, what are the consequences of different counter-terrorism campaigns, and how are these measured? And, third, how and why do changes to counter-terrorism occur? This volume will be of much interest to students of counter-terrorism, critical terrorism studies, criminology, security studies and IR in general.

This book offers a wide-ranging and critical examination of recent counter-radicalisation policies, using case studies from several countries. Counter-radicalisation policies, such as the UK ‘Prevent’ strategy, have been highly controversial and increasingly criticised since their introduction. In this edited volume, voices from disciplines including sociology, political science, criminology and International Relations are brought together to address issues across the global roll-out of counter-radicalisation agendas. In so doing, the book critically interrogates: (i) the connections between counter-radicalisation and other governmental programmes and priorities relating to integration and community cohesion; (ii) the questionable dependence of counter-radicalisation initiatives on discourses and assumptions about race, risk and vulnerability to extremism; and, (iii) the limitations of existing counter-radicalisation machineries for addressing relatively new types of extremism including amongst ‘right-wing’ activists. Through examining these questions, the book draws on a range of contemporary case studies spanning from counter-radicalisation in the UK, Germany and Denmark, through to detailed analyses of specific preventative initiatives in Australia and the United States. Conceptually, the chapters engage with a range of critical approaches, including discourse theory, autoethnography and governmentality. This book will be of much interest to students of radicalisation, critical terrorism studies, counter-terrorism, sociology, security studies and IR in general.

This book explores the interrelationship between terrorism and policy relevance from a range of critical perspectives. In particular, it questions the politics of policy-relevance; that is, it interrogates how epistemological and practical pressures to produce "policy-relevant" research shapes prevalent understandings of (counter)terrorism, and vice-versa. It also reflects on Critical Terrorism Studies’ (CTS) relationship to policy-relevance. Should CTS eschew engagement with policy-relevance and maintain a position outside the orthodoxy, or are CTS scholars uniquely positioned to offer meaningful alternatives to contemporary counterterrorism practices? Read thus, the question of policy relevance is central to CTS’ identity and represents an essential juncture as to how associated scholarship might develop into the future.

This book provides the first sustained critical engagement with the legacy of the 9/11 attacks twenty years on. Featuring a wide range of established and emerging voices in critical terrorism studies, the book explores the deeply political character of remembering and forgetting, and the racialised, gendered and other contexts within which this takes place. A lively and provocative conversation between feminist, postcolonial, post-structural, literary and critical perspectives, 9/11 Twenty Years On asks what ‘the day that changed the world’ means for critical terrorism studies today, and how we might choose to mark those events in the future. It will be essential reading for upper-level students, researchers and academics in the fields of International Relations, Security Studies and Political Science in general, as well as anyone interested in critical approaches to terrorism, political violence, and memory. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Critical Studies on Terrorism.

Conceptualizing Terrorism argues that, in the post 9/11 world, the need for an internationally agreed definition of terrorism is more important than it has ever been, despite the challenges that such an endeavour presents. Indeed, in a global context, where the term is often applied selectively and pejoratively according to where one's interests lie, there is a real need to instill some analytical quality into the concept of terrorism, not least in order to prevent the term being manipulated to justify all manner of counter-terrorism responses. Not only is this important for the policymaking context but it is also an imperative task within academia - in order to strengthen the theoretical foundation of terrorism studies, for all other terrorism related theories rest on what one means by terrorism in the first place. Written from an academic perspective, the book explores the prospects for terrorism as an analytical concept. Arguing that the essence of this particular form of political violence lies in its intent to generate a psychological impact beyond the immediate victims, it goes on to propose the adoption of three key preliminary assumptions that have implications for the definitional debate and that it suggests might help to increase the analytical potential of terrorism. The book then considers potential elements of a definition before concluding with its own conceptualization of terrorism.

This book explores and inquiries into the interrelation between normativity and Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS) from a wide range of critical views. The volume draws together authors with very different positions and understandings of normativity and policy-implementations in relation to countering terrorism, to offer the reader a wide range of perspectives and views on this topic. As such, the book is aimed at interrogating the concept of normativity in CTS from a wide range of theoretical angles but also at incorporating within the CTS’ agenda new debates and critiques. In its chapters, the book covers debates that go from more philosophical, theoretical, and ethical discussions to questions revolving around the importance and need of being policy-relevant for CTS scholars. All in all, this volume brings together chapters joining the debate on CTS’ main theoretical tenants and the role of critical scholars in counter-terrorism and prevention policies. Covering a broad spectrum of approaches and perspectives, authors in this book give different answers to central questions such as: how can we rethink CTS? What is the role of the critical terrorism studies community in countering terrorism? The chapters in this book were originally published in the journal, Critical Studies on Terrorism.

This volume is a timely contribution to the current debates and potential efforts to study and counter the phenomena of extreme right violence in a period when the rise of right-wing extremism is being witnessed across the globe. Against this backdrop, the violent radicalisation and extremism of individuals and groups belonging to the extreme right threaten to undermine and destabilize societies and democratic orders, leaving a research gap that has only started to be filled in recent years, but that is still quite wide when it comes to counter-terrorism approaches to extreme right violence. Learning from the past, and trying to avoid similar mistakes, this volume creates a much-needed space for open, honest, and ethical debate around countering extreme right violence, answering social and political calls to debate how to counter this kind of violence. This volume brings together a group of interdisciplinary scholars to contribute to national and international, academic and policy debates about countering extreme right violence from a critical perspective. Volume II focuses particularly on exploring how extreme right violence has been approached in different spatial and temporal contexts, examining how the criminal justice system has dealt with the threat of and actual violence perpetrated by the extreme right, deconstructing current counter-terrorism approaches from feminist and gender perspectives, and formulating a critical approach to countering extreme right violence. It will be of great interest to all students of terrorism studies, security studies, international relations, and political science in general. The chapters in this book were originally published in Critical Studies on Terrorism.