Routledge Handbook of Critical Terrorism Studies

The Routledge Handbook of Critical Terrorism Studies is a comprehensive collection of cutting-edge essays on all aspects of the Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS) subfield, featuring both established and up-and-coming international scholars, including many of the scholars who started CTS nearly a decade ago.

Terrorism studies has emerged in recent years as one of the most dynamic new fields of study and teaching in academia, with some scholars referring to the current moment as ‘a golden age’ of terrorism studies. In this rapidly developing context, critical terrorism studies (CTS) emerged in late 2005 as a critically-oriented challenge to the orthodox field, and as an umbrella group and alternative intellectual perspective for a great many scholars and students who felt uncomfortable with the traditional state-centric security focus of the existing field. Within a few years, CTS was recognized as a major new subfield of terrorism-related research and teaching, and was institutionalized through an international network of scholars, a peer-reviewed scholarly journal (Critical Studies on Terrorism), a book series, regular conferences and panels, and a number of textbooks. In some respects, the growth of CTS was part of, and is aligned with, the broader critical security studies movement within IR-based security studies.

This new handbook identifies the key contemporary topics of research and debate today, and evaluates the achievements of CTS over its first decade. It is divided into six sections. The first examines the critical challenge posed by CTS to the established Terrorism Studies field and evaluates the debates and controversies that have emerged as a consequence of the CTS critique. The second section examines the central characteristics of a ‘critical’ approach to the study of ‘terrorism’, such as its ontology, epistemology and ethics, and evaluates the contribution of different theoretical approaches such as post-structuralism, historical-materialism, constructivism and the like. The third section examines the main issues surrounding the nature and causes of ‘terrorism’ from a CTS perspective, while section four examines the greatly neglected subject of state terrorism. Section five addresses critical research on important aspects of counter-terrorism and the war on terror, while the final section examines a number of perennial key issues in terrorism research, as well as some emerging debates.

This new handbook will be of great interest to students of terrorism studies, political violence, critical security studies and IR in general.

Richard Jackson is Professor of Peace Studies and Deputy Director at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (NCPACS) at the University of Otago, New Zealand. He is founding editor and current editor-in-chief of the journalCritical Studies on Terrorism and author/editor of eight books, including, latterly,Contemporary Debates on Terrorism (co-edited, Routledge 2012), Terrorism: A Critical Introduction(co-authored, Palgrave 2011), and Contemporary State Terrorism (co-edited, Routledge 2010).