Making sense of terrorism
A narrative approach to the study of violent events
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12918968 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Alexandra Homolar (0000-0001-9537-8046, University of Warwick, corresponding author), Pablo A Rodríguez-Merino (0000-0002-1863-1463, University of Warwick) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 12 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 561-581 |
| Publication date | 2019-03-07 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Critical Studies on Terrorism (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1753-9161 • E-ISSN: 1753-9153 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/17539153.2019.1585150 |
| OpenAlex | W2921677446 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 19 |
| References cited | 74 |
How does violence become understood as terrorism? In this article, we show how a narrative approach to the study of violent events offers a conceptually productive way to understand the process of “seeing” an event as a terrorist act, one that explicitly integrates the phenomenology of violence. While the collective practice of defining terrorism in academia and the policy arena has struggled to produce a universal definition, we identify a set of “common sense” characteristics. We argue that if the framing of violent events prominently features these characteristics as discursive anchors, this primes processes of sensemaking toward interpreting violence as terrorism. While terrorism markers are often articulated as being pragmatic and apolitical indicators of terrorist acts, we show that they are indeed at the core of political contests over historical and physical facts about violent events. The narrative approach we develop in this article underscores that intuitive leanings toward interpreting violence as terrorism are a sign of political agency precisely because they are produced through the stories political agents tell
Criminology · Epistemology · Framing (construction · Narrative · Political science · Political violence · Politics · Public relations · Sensemaking · Sociology · Terrorism · Global Security and Public Health · History · Law · Political Conflict and Governance · Psychology · Social Psychology · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence
Contranarrativas en búsqueda de vida
Narrative alliances
Populism and the Affective Politics of Humiliation Narratives
The politics of “political violence”
The dispositive of terrorism during the war on terrorism
Governing global challenges through quantified futures
Counting bodies, preventing war
When Ideologies Became Dangerous
A call to arms
The Politics of Stability in Kazakhstan
All the Roads to Market
Poverty reduction through land transfers? The World Bank’s titling reforms and the making of “subsistence” agriculture
Speaking of hybrid warfare
The impact of the narrative of victimization
A world turned upside down
Tweeting terrorism
The importance of school and victim testimonies in adolescents’ knowledge of terrorism
Getting the “basics”? The World Bank’s narrative construction of poverty reduction in China
Death and denial in the city
Research in Organizational Behavior
An Introduction to Narratology
The Content of the Form
Reframing Policy Discourse
Sensemaking and sensegiving in strategic change initiation
Ontological Security and Foreign Policy
Narrative and the Making of US National Security
The Political Culture of Social Welfare Policy
Forging the World: Strategic Narratives and International Relations
Narrative Politics
Speaking of Violence
Disciplining Terror
Revolution, Rebellion, Resistance
Constructions of Terrorism
The Deadly Ethnic Riot
Security
The Routledge Handbook of Terrorism Research
Posthumanist Performativity
Violence
The Effect of Affect on Foreign Language Learning
In defence of ‘terrorism’
On the future of critical terrorism studies
Framing terrorism
The end of terrorism studies
A case against ‘Critical Terrorism Studies’
Critical Terrorism Studies–an introduction
Building foundations for the comparative study of state and non-state terrorism
Deconstructing “eco-terrorism”
The political importance of labelling
Narrative, Ontological Security, and Foreign Policy Change
Filling the Void of Meaning
A Critical Research Agenda for the Study of Political Terror
The Multifaceted Criminal Notion of Terrorism in International Law
Terrorism and War
Dilemmas of Discourse
Narrative in the Study of Victimological Processes in Terrorism and Political Violence
Narrative, Political Violence, and Social Change
A Response to Jones and Smith
"Talking to "Terrorists
The Metaphor of Terror
The Spaces and Faces of Critical Terrorism Studies
The power of Trump-speak
Rhetoric of Atrocities
How to do things with the word ‘terrorist’
Reconstructing desecuritisation
Just and Unjust Wars
Narratives of Redemption
Symposium on Strategic Narratives
Unknown knowns
Narrative Versions, Narrative Theories
The Study of Terrorism After 11 September 2001
Crisis exploitation
A genealogy of the chemical weapons taboo
The Nuclear Taboo
A Case for Critical Terrorism Studies
Securitization and the Construction of Security
Rebels without a conscience
Culture, Strategy and Foreign Policy Change
Counter-Terrorism and the Counterfactual
Security That Matters
Making sense of sensemaking narratives
Forgetting Isis
An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative
Progress and Pitfalls in the Study of Political Violence
Terrorism as a strategy of insurgency
Reflections on Terrorism
Sociology of Terrorism
From September 11th, 2001 to 9-11
The Narrative Construction of Reality
| Unique citing works | 19 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 3,17 |
| Citation span | 2020 - 2026 (7) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 18 |