Between Orthodoxy and Criticality: Mapping U.K.-based Terrorism Studies Educators’ Paradigms

• In Event: Advances in Teaching Methods 1. Critical and Novel Perspectives

Abstract

Since Terrorism Studies was born around the early-1970s (Stampnitzky, 2013), orthodoxy dominated Terrorism Studies. In The Causes of Terrorism (1981), Martha Crenshaw suggested that Terrorism Studies could be organized around three clusters: causes, development and socio-political consequences (p. 379). Until 2007, the peer-reviewed journals Studies in Conflict and Terrorism and Terrorism and Political Violence were the only dedicated spaces to discuss the phenomenon. Substantial progress was accomplished, however, the enormous resources that have been allocated to Terrorism Studies, especially Orthodox Terrorism Studies (OTS), were not enough to fill all gaps that continue to be open (Sageman, 2014; Schuurman, 2019; Haghani, 2022). Eventually, Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS) emerged by challenging, among OTS’s characteristics such as “[…] an embarrassing list of methodological and analytical weaknesses […]” (Jackson, 2007: 244), the overemphasis on non-State terrorism driven by States’ agendas and consequent negligence towards State Terrorism, as argued by Smyth et al. (2008) to launch the peer-reviewed Critical Studies on Terrorism journal. Swiftly, Horgan and Boyle (2008) published A Case Against “Critical Terrorism Studies” that ends by concluding that the allegedly limitations that were being highlighted by CTS scholars had been already considered by their OTS peers, a division that seems to have been crystallized (Jackson, 2012; English, 2016). Methodologically built upon a Descriptive Content Analysis (DCA) (Neuendorf, 2002) on the syllabuses that U.K.-based Terrorism Studies educators have designed, the present research maps out their teaching resources to answer: What have been the most read Terrorism Studies peer-reviewed journals? What have been the most read Terrorism Studies books? Who have been the most read Terrorism Studies scholars? Is Orthodox Terrorism Studies still the dominant paradigm? Ultimately, the present research answers: What are we teaching about terrorism?

Author

• João Raphael da Silva, University of the West of England