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Making sense of terrorism : a narrative approach to the study of violent events
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Homolar, Alexandra and Rodríguez-Merino, Pablo A. (2019) Making sense of terrorism : a narrative approach to the study of violent events. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 12 (4). pp. 561-581. doi:10.1080/17539153.2019.1585150 ISSN 1753-9153.
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17539153.2019.1585150
Abstract
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.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||
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Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare | ||||||
Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Politics and International Studies | ||||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Terrorism, Violence | ||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Critical Studies on Terrorism | ||||||
Publisher: | Routledge | ||||||
ISSN: | 1753-9153 | ||||||
Official Date: | 7 March 2019 | ||||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | 12 | ||||||
Number: | 4 | ||||||
Page Range: | pp. 561-581 | ||||||
DOI: | 10.1080/17539153.2019.1585150 | ||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||
Reuse Statement (publisher, data, author rights): | “This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Critical Studies on Terrorism on 07/03/2019, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/17539153.2019.1585150 | ||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 7 March 2019 | ||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 13 May 2019 | ||||||
RIOXX Funder/Project Grant: |
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