The Social Problem of Terrorism

• In Event: 033 - Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 15. Culture, Media, and Socialization

Abstract

Following the political examination of terrorism, this research suggests that the social problem task becomes not to expose or define who the terrorist of the week is--whether it be the Unabomber or the Islamic State organization (ISIS) threatening national security or the Central Intelligence Agency conducting covert actions--but to examine the political processes and practices that maintain, create, and change the definitions of certain actions as terrorist. Accordingly, we may be better able to understand the status of terrorism as either an act of defiance, deviance, social control, politics, and/or coercion and to understand it as part of a particular time and place as a social problem.

Author

• Pat L. Lauderdale, ASU