This is an excerpt from Critical Terrorism Studies: A Dictionary by Lee Jarvis and Alice Martini. Available in all good book stores, and via free download from E-International Relations.

Critical terrorism studies (CTS) has been with us for around twenty years now as a broad framework for thinking differently about terrorism and counterterrorism. However we understand CTS – and there is much more on this throughout the book – its origins can be traced to the first decade of the twenty-first century. This was a time of growing discontent with the George W. Bush administration’s ongoing ‘war on terror’ both within the United States (US) and beyond. The contours of that ‘war’ (if, indeed, that’s what it was) quickly expanded beyond its early concern with Al-Qaeda and the Taliban as the architects of the 9/11 attacks, stretching this new security paradigm beyond its geographical focus on Afghanistan. The move towards a major military intervention in Iraq, most notably, attracted condemnation and record numbers of protestors, with an estimated 1.5 million people taking to the streets of London alone (Adams 2023). Such protests chimed with declining global sympathy for the US – prominent in the aftermath of 9/11 – as the war on terror’s death toll grew ever larger. Important and powerful allies such as France withheld diplomatic and legal support for America’s military ambitions, and President Bush’s approval rating began to fall dramatically from the peak it had reached in late 2001.

But the war on terror was never, only, about its most visible military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. This was a war fought through legislatures and criminal justice systems, in ‘black sites’ around the world, in classrooms and lecture theatres, at airports and railway stations, and in countless other places. The war’s moral standing came under intense scrutiny in the early 2000s as people began to read about human rights abuses at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and beyond. Investigative journalists like Jane Mayer revealed the workings of the US’ extraordinary rendition programme involving the abduction, transfer and abuse of terrorist suspects, memorably described as ‘outsourcing torture’ (Mayer 2005). This decade saw growing concern, too, with the stigmatisation of racialised communities and faiths as ‘suspect’ or ‘risky’ in political speeches, tabloid headlines, television shows, government policies, security initiatives and police practices. The racial profiling of Muslims for counterterrorism purposes, for instance, was apparent long before Donald Trump’s so-called ‘Muslim Ban’ of 2017, not least in the US Department of Homeland Security’s Special Registration programme which required ‘foreign nationals from predominantly Arab or Muslim countries to report to immigration offices for fingerprinting, photographing, and interviews on pain of deportation’ (Cole 2008, 1336).

By the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century concerns such as these were increasingly prominent amongst academic researchers. Although not surprising – for all their criticism, universities remain an important place of debate and dissent – three dynamics of this period made these concerns more salient than they might otherwise have been. First, was the changing nature of academia itself. New incentives were put upon researchers to contribute to, or have an impact upon, social and political life beyond the university. For our purposes, this helped facilitate new connections and partnerships between academics and the policymakers, police and intelligence officials, journalists, human rights lawyers, advocacy groups, community organisations, and ‘ordinary’ citizens caught up in the war on terror. A second feature of this time was an opening up of social scientific disciplines such as Terrorism Studies to a much wider menu of conceptual and methodological frameworks including from traditional Humanities subjects such as Anthropology, Gender Studies, and Sociology. These frameworks offered new inspiration and tools for researchers interested in working on terrorism, but who found themselves dispirited by terrorism studies’ traditional ambitions or methods. Third, and perhaps most important, was a concerted effort by researchers to build something collective: to create a research community for critical scholarship on terrorism and counterterrorism that might speak uncomfortable truths to policymakers and thereby shake up the concerns and ambitions of what was sometimes known as ‘traditional’, ‘mainstream’ or ‘orthodox’ terrorism research (Jackson 2015).

These political and academic dynamics together provide the backdrop for the emergence of critical terrorism studies. The failings and horrors of the post- 9/11 period – the violences of terrorists and those seeking to counter them – added urgency to the need to rethink the politics of terrorism. The changing social role of academics encouraged direct engagement with such dynamics, as well as the impetus to resist co-option into controversial initiatives such as counter-radicalisation programmes. Growing familiarity with theories and methods beyond the mainstream of terrorism research opened new ways of thinking about how and why ‘terrorism’ might be studied. And, an increasing appetite for, and willingness to invest in, collaborative and collective research helped consolidate this momentum into something much greater than a series of isolated or disconnected critical research projects (Jackson et al. 2011).

A great deal has, of course, changed since those early years of CTS. We have witnessed, amongst other things: the demise (although not death) of Al- Qaeda; the rise, fall, and transformation of ISIS – which remains one of the world’s most dangerous non-state terrorist organisations; the proliferation of violences by affiliate organisations and lone actors disconnected from formal groups; and, the (re-)emergence of new forms of violence associated with the far-right, white supremacism, misogynistic ‘inceldom’, and beyond. We have seen, too, in this period, the expansion and embedding of counter- radicalisation and counter-extremism initiatives across the world such as the UK’s Prevent Strategy or UN Secretary-General Ban-Ki Moon’s Plan of Action to Prevent Violent Extremism. And, we have witnessed the introduction of innumerable new policies, laws, technologies, programmes, and international resolutions aimed at countering the threat of terrorism. Even when the politics of terrorism seems to have taken a back seat to other events – such as the Russo-Ukraine War and the risk of great power conflict – we have rarely had to wait long for terrorism to recentre itself in media and political agendas. The violences of the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack in Israel – and the violences since in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and beyond – offer dramatic and tragic illustration of terrorism’s seeming ubiquity. Indeed, we write this introduction in the aftermath of several recent high-profile attacks in Munich (Germany), Mastung (Pakistan), and New Orleans (US).

The years since the events of 9/11 have also seen dramatic changes take place within the field of terrorism research. New conceptual frameworks for grappling with (counter-)terrorism have emerged – for instance in relation to ‘stochastic terrorism’. Existing models – such as David Rapoport’s (2012) well-known ‘waves of terrorism’ thesis – have been updated and challenged by those looking to account for new developments. Formerly prominent theses – such as around ‘religious terrorism’ or ‘new terrorism’ – have seen their popularity wax and wane. Hitherto under-emphasised types of terrorism – such as associated with the far-right – have seen a burgeoning of literature. And, researchers have been quick to grapple with the impact of wider social contexts and dynamics on the politics of terrorism, for instance in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g. Ackerman and Peterson 2020), and the emergence of Artificial Intelligence (Martini 2025).

Keeping track of such important changes can seem overwhelming and difficult. Even more difficult, perhaps, is thinking through their significance for those of us who are interested in approaching terrorism and counterterrorism critically. This is why we set out to write this book, which we hope provides a useful critical introduction to some of the key ideas relating to terrorism. Our aim, in so doing, is to provide students, teachers, lecturers, and general readers with an overview of how research associated........

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