Knowledge matters: How the construction of terrorism constrains practice and expertise 1

Similar documents
Chapter 8: The Use of Force

The Emergence of Terrorism Studies as a Field

Conflating Terrorism and Insurgency

STRUCTURE APPENDIX D APPENDIX D

Lecture 2: What is Terrorism? Is this man a Terrorist or a Freedom Fighter?

Lecture 2: What is Terrorism? Is this man a Terrorist or a Freedom Fighter?

Negotiating with Terrorists an Option Not to Be Forgone

Critical Approaches to Terrorism Studies Christina Tallungan, Director of Debate at Notre Dame High School (Sherman Oaks, CA)

Introduction Rationale and Core Objectives

Masters in Terrorism and Political Violence - Full time programme

Exploring Civilian Protection: A Seminar Series

Ethno Nationalist Terror

DRONES VERSUS SECURITY OR DRONES FOR SECURITY?

SHAPE POLICY TO STRATEGICALLY FIGHT GLOBAL TERRORISM

WEB APPENDIX. to accompany. Veto Players and Terror. Journal of Peace Research 47(1): Joseph K. Young 1. Southern Illinois University.

The Narrative Threat of North Korea: An Initial Assessment

ISTANBUL SECURITY CONFERENCE 2018

CHAPTER 20 NATIONAL SECURITY POLICYMAKING CHAPTER OUTLINE

Some Reasons Why International Terrorism Has Not Yet Become the Common Enemy of Mankind

SOCI 423: THEORIES OF SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

Terrorism in Africa: Challenges and perspectives

Toward an Anthropology of Terrorism. As noted in Chapter 10 of Introducing Anthropology of Religion, terrorism (or any other form of violence)

Countering Online Extremism as Soft Power and Crime Prevention. Dr. Keiran Hardy Griffith Criminology Institute

The first affirmation of the Center s Guideline ( on

The Devil You Don t Know

Counter-Terrorism as Crime Prevention: A Holistic Approach

The Paradoxes of Terrorism

Engage Education Foundation

Notes from discussion in Erik Olin Wright Lecture #2: Diagnosis & Critique Middle East Technical University Tuesday, November 13, 2007


Lecture (9) Critical Discourse Analysis

Teaching Notes Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present

Foreword to Killing by Remote Control (edited by Bradley Jay Strawser, Oxford University Press, 2012) Jeff McMahan

Negotiating Terrorism:

D DAVID PUBLISHING. Terrorism as a Threat to the European and Global Order. Introduction. Fatmir Rrahmanaj

Objectives To explore the meanings of conflict and war. To make deductions and practise reasoning skills.

From the veil of ignorance to the overlapping consensus: John Rawls as a theorist of communication

PO/IR 265 TERRORISM: STRATEGIES OF DESTRUCTION IES Abroad Rome

A Necessary Discussion About International Law

Topic 1 Causes, Practices and Effects of War in the Twentieth Century (Compiled from 10 Topic and 6 Topic Format)

Review of The Policing of Terrorism: Organizational and Global Perspectives by Mathieu Deflem

All is Fair in War? Just War Theory and American Applications. Chris Sabolcik GSW Area II

Programme Specification

SHOULD THE UNITED STATES WORRY ABOUT LARGE, FAST-GROWING ECONOMIES?

Strategic Insights: Getting Comfortable with Conflicting Ideas

Towards a sustainable peace: the role of reconciliation in post-conflict societies. Carla Prado 1

Chantal Mouffe On the Political

Conventional Deterrence: An Interview with John J. Mearsheimer

Disagreement, Error and Two Senses of Incompatibility The Relational Function of Discursive Updating

CONVENTIONAL WARS: EMERGING PERSPECTIVE

Improvements in the Cuban Legal System

NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES DESIGNING INSTITUTIONS TO DEAL WITH TERRORISM IN THE UNITED STATES. Martin S. Feldstein

Testimony of Joseph S. Nye, Jr. University Distinguished Service Professor Harvard University

Fall Quarter 2018 Descriptions Updated 4/12/2018

Leadership in COIN Operations

Charles Tilly s Relational Approach to Terrorism* Jeff Goodwin. New York University

CENTRAL TEXAS COLLEGE HMSY 1342 UNDERSTANDING AND COMBATING TERRORISM. Semester Hours Credit: 3 INSTRUCTOR: OFFICE HOURS:

The Falange Espanola: Spanish Fascism

Moral Dilemmas of Modern War

Topic 1 Causes, Practices and Effects of War in the Twentieth Century (Compiled from 10 Topic and 6 Topic Format)

The Construction of History under Indonesia s New Order: the Making of the Lubang Buaya Official Narrative

Foro de Seguridad XXV Foro Económico. Krynica (Polonia) 8-10 de septiembre de 2015

Ideology COLIN J. BECK

Confronting the Nucleus Taking Power from Fascists

constructivist theories of international relations

AP TEST REVIEW - PERIOD 6 KEY CONCEPTS Accelerating Global Change and Realignments, c to the Present

Sociology. Sociology 1

Reconciliation, Truth, and Justice in the post-yugoslav States

History Major. The History Discipline. Why Study History at Montreat College? After Graduation. Requirements of a Major in History

TERRORISM Fervour is the weapon of choice of the impotent. FRANZ FANON, B l a c k S k i n, White Ma s k s (1952)

LOGROLLING. Nicholas R. Miller Department of Political Science University of Maryland Baltimore County Baltimore, Maryland

The principles of science advice

Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos Annotation

Threatening retaliation against third-party enablers can help prevent terrorist organizations from obtaining needed resources.

M. Taylor Fravel Statement of Research (September 2011)

Conclusion. This study brings out that the term insurgency is not amenable to an easy generalization.

War and Violence: The Use of Nuclear Warfare in World War II

COUNTERING AND PREVENTING RADICALIZATION IN THE MENA REGION AND THE EU

Legitimacy and Complexity

Political Opposition and Authoritarian Rule: State-Society Relations in the Middle East and North Africa

International Security Problems and Solutions by Patrick M. Morgan (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2006)

What Happened To Human Security?

The Department of State s Annual Report on Terrorism

Rule of Law and COIN environment

NEW RULES OR MORE GLOBAL GOVERNANCE? Margaret M. deguzman*

Varieties of Organized Violence

Theories of the Historical Development of American Schooling

Robbins Part 3. Resistance and Rebellion

Terrorism, Counter-terrorism and Human Rights: the experience of emergency powers in Northern Ireland

1. Students access, synthesize, and evaluate information to communicate and apply Social Studies knowledge to Time, Continuity, and Change

Bangladesh s Counter terrorism Efforts: The People s Empowerment Model. Farooq Sobhan

The interaction between democracy and terrorism

Introduction to the Cold War

how is proudhon s understanding of property tied to Marx s (surplus

paoline terrill 00 fmt auto 10/15/13 6:35 AM Page i Police Culture

Journal of Conflict Transformation & Security

PROTOCOL 1: MOVING HUMANITARIAN LAW BACKWARDS

(Review) Globalizing Roman Culture: Unity, Diversity and Empire

Visiting Assistant Professor Politics Department, Bates College

A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge

Transcription:

Stampnitzky 1 Knowledge matters: How the construction of terrorism constrains practice and expertise 1 Lisa Stampnitzky Institute for Science Innovation and Society, Said Business School, University of Oxford lisastampnitzky@gmail.com or lisa.stampnitzky@sbs.ox.ac.uk Paper for: Capturing Security Expertise, Copenhagen 16-17 June, 2011 DRAFT: please do not cite or circulate without permission 2 This paper makes two main claims. First, it argues that shifting problematizations of terrorism have opened up some modes of governance, and closed off others. Second, it shows that the shifting discursive frames applied to terrorism have also had significant effects upon the possibilities for the production of expertise. Drawing on a larger study of the emergence and development of terrorism expertise in the U.S. from 1972 to the present, it illustrates these claims by describing three shifts in the problematization of terrorism, and how each of these shifts affected the possibilities for both counterterrorism policy and counterterrorism expertise. The concept of terrorism as we now know it first took shape in the 1970s. While political violence, including acts such as bombings, kidnappings, and hijackings that are now understood to be hallmarks of terrorism, had occurred before, such events had generally been understood through a framework of insurgency, a violent and oppositional, yet rational, process. The new framework of terrorism that emerged over the course of the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, however, would recast such incidents as the acts of pathological, irrational, immoral actors. Terrorism emerged from this transformation as an inherently problematic concept: undefinable, infused with moral judgment, and deeply politicized leading to persistent difficulties for those who would create rational knowledge about it. This paper describes the 1 This paper draws on arguments and data from my book manuscript, Disciplining Terror: How Experts and Others Created Terrorism. 2 This is an incomplete draft. A full paper will be available before the conference.

Stampnitzky 2 transformation of political violence into terrorism had consequences for the creation of expert knowledge, public understanding, and practical policy. I will also discuss, more briefly, two later shifts in the conceptualization and application of expertise to the problem, and how these affected the possibilities for governance. These are, the shift from a conceptualization of terrorism as a criminal/legal problem into a type of war in the early 1980s, and the shift from a logic of retaliation to a logic of preemption that took hold after the events of 9/11/2001. The creation of the problem of terrorism had concrete effects for ways of knowing about political violence, and for the policy responses that might be applied to the problem. While the insurgency framework acknowledged, at least in theory, if not always in practice, that political violence stemmed from political grievances, the terrorism framework sought to separate understandings of political violence from analyses of motivations, to insist that perpetrators of terrorism must be without legitimate political goals, or even to deny that terrorist violence had any rational purpose at all. 3 This shift has had a number of consequences for the realm of policy responses. Perhaps most significantly, while the insurgency framework at least held out the possibility that political violence might be resolved by addressing grievances, 4 the terrorism framework actively excluded such a possibility from consideration. However, this was not simply a unidirectional effect, from expertise to policy. The shifting problematizations of terrorism (themselves constructed by experts) also, in turn, have effects upon the possibilities for the construction of experts and expertise. The formation of terrorism as a problem with a moral evaluation built into it has meant that attempts to develop a 3 If this sounds contradictory, that is because it is: as I have argued elsewhere ( Robust ambiguity: How problems resist stabilization, paper under review), terrorism has taken shape as a robustly ambiguous problem: one that is characterized by the presence of contradictory meanings, which persist over time. 4 In practice, of course, counterinsurgency has usually been characterized by violence, both symbolic and literal.

Stampnitzky 3 morally neutral terrorism expertise, and sometimes even attempts to understand terrorism at all, have been subject to discrediting attacks as, somewhat paradoxically, politicized knowledge. Table 1: Core shifts in ways of knowing and governing terrorism, 1960-2001 Logic of governance Key time period Archetypal knowledge technique Corresponding techniques of management Associated experts Key actors Object of governance Counterinsurgency 1960s Sociology / political science. Mapping. Cultural knowledge. armed social work Sociologists- The state/ studies of colonial powers revolution, social movements; anthropologists; area studies society itself as the host to insurgents. Legal / crime and punishment Early/ mid 1970s Legal analysis International law/diplomacy; extradition; use of national and international courts Lawyers; diplomats.; criminologists; law enforcement States and the international system terrorist actors and organizations; the international system Warfare (retributive/ limited) 1980s Narratives/ intelligence tracing connections between terrorism and states Retributive strikes against terrorist groups/ sites Journalists, think tanks, military States (military) Terrorist groups (and, implicitly, the cold war balance of power) Pre-emption 2001- present Intelligence; law Pre-emptive lawyers warfare; rendition; enhanced interrogations State (executive/ military/ intelligence/ secret agencies) Pre-emption of terrorist actions The sources of information I draw upon in this paper include conference reports and other archival and secondary textual sources, chosen to represent the history of American terrorism expertise from the 1970s to the present day. In addition to these written sources, I conducted

Stampnitzky 4 thirty-two semi-structured interviews with current and former researchers in the field, focusing upon individual career histories and views of the field, including interviewees judgments of what constitutes useful and legitimate knowledge. 5 I also engaged in a number of more informal conversations with academics, think tank researchers, current/former military personnel, and defense department consultants, and obtained transcripts from a series of 11 interviews conducted with terrorism experts in the early 1980s (Hoffman 1984). From counterinsurgency to counterterrorism Over the course of the 1970s, expert discourses on bombings, kidnappings, and hijackings shifted from a framework organized around insurgency to one organized around the concept of terrorism. This shift fundamentally transformed both understandings of political violence, and the scope of possibilities for practical response to the problem. The earliest expert commentaries on terrorism drew heavily upon an earlier discourse on organized political violence- that of insurgency and counterinsurgency-- which saw political violence as largely rational, and subject to rational analysis. Yet by the late 1970s, a new framework of terrorism had displaced this earlier discourse, and terrorism had taken shape as a problem in and of itself. This had significant consequences for the sorts of discourses and practices that have been available to expert and lay commentators on the problem of political violence. The shift from insurgency to terrorism affected the role of grievances in understandings of terrorism, the relation of judgments of morality to the production of expert and lay knowledge about terrorism, and the role of terrorism experts themselves in relation to the problem and its analysis. 5 In selecting interviewees, I aimed to recruit those who were prominent in the development of the field, basing my judgments upon conference presentations, journal articles and book publications, and the results of an earlier survey in which experts were asked to rank others in the field (Schmid and Jongman 1988). I aimed to include a mix of experts based at universities, think tanks, in government, and in the media, as well as both representatives of those who had been active in the field since its inception and more recent entrants.

Stampnitzky 5 Although the events they deal with appear similar, the discourses of counterinsurgency and counterterrorism differ in their conceptualizations of the problem, its causes, and the potential responses they suggest. The counterinsurgency discourse tended to conceptualize insurgents and counterinsurgents as parallel roles, but the discourse on terrorism was characterized by an ongoing tension over whether or not terrorists were necessarily evil, pathological, irrational actors, fundamentally different from us. The discourse of insurgency did not attach any necessary moral evaluation to the character of the insurgent, but the identity of the terrorist would become imbued with moral judgment (although some experts would then, in an ongoing dialectical process, seek to divest the concept of terrorism of moral character). Whereas insurgents were generally assumed to be rational actors, who could be countered with a similarly rational strategy of counter-insurgency, the rationality of terrorism, and thus the possibilities for rational analysis and treatment of the problem, would become ever- contested. And while insurgency was largely considered to stem from political, even structural, motivations and goals, the question of whether or not terrorists even have political goals has been highly contested, and the nature of terrorists goals has been a site of much contention in the creation and spread of terrorism expertise. This new discourse of terrorism would be organized around three fundamental ambiguities rationality, morality, and politics. And each of these ambiguities not only raised questions and created difficulties for knowledge about terrorism, and but difficulties for knowers of terrorism. The earliest expert commentaries on terrorism drew heavily upon the counterinsurgency literature (together with studies of social movements, and violence more generally). A bibliographic study of the early terrorism literature found frequent references to authors associated with the counterinsurgency such as Feliks Gross, Joseph Roucek and Eugene

Stampnitzky 6 Walter, and Brian Crozier, Robert Moss, and Richard Clutterbuck (Reid 1983:224). Even as the decade wore on, counterinsurgency experts were among those considered as potential terrorism experts. Brian Crozier, Robert Moss, and Ted Gurr were among those considered as speakers for a 1976 State Department conference on terrorism, 6 a 1976 conference on Terror: The Man, the Mind, the Matter included presentations from Felicks Gross and Nicholas Kittrie, and RAND counterinsurgency expert Nathan Leites was one of the speakers at a 1978 International Scientific Conference on Terrorism (Becker 1978). By the late 1970s, however, new and specialized terrorism experts had emerged. The counterinsurgency literature, and the counterinsurgency experts, were no longer the go-to people for explanations, and a new problematization of terrorism had crystallized 7. While the discourses of insurgency and of terrorism take as their objects seemingly similar acts, including bombings, kidnappings, and hostage-takings, there are significant differences in the way each frames the perpetrators of violence; their motives and goals, and the causes and effects of their actions. Furthermore, the discourses of counterinsurgency and terrorism expertise each set up a different relation through which the expert speakers of these discourse relate to their objects of study. In the following table, I identify three key axes along which terrorism became newly problematic in the new discourse of terrorism expertise, both in terms of conceptualizations of terrorists themselves, and in terms of the possibilities for creation of expert knowledge: morality, rationality, and politicization. Whereas insurgency and counterinsurgency were, at least formally, conceptualized as parallel processes, this was no longer the case as the discourse of terrorism /counterterrorism 6 DNSA Document TE 441: agenda for meeting 92 WG/CCCT (1975) 7 See Disciplining Terror for a detailed analysis of this shift.

Stampnitzky 7 emerged. 8 Whereas insurgents were conceptualized first as enemies, terrorists were often conceptualized as evil. Whereas insurgents were generally assumed to be rational, the question of whether or not terrorists are rational (either in their goals, or their methods) is one of continual debate. And, finally, while insurgents were assumed to have political goals, the question of whether or not terrorists have understandable political goals, was continually open to question. Further, the anchors of morality, rationality, and politics would become key factors shaping experts relation to their object of discourse. In other words, the legitimacy of experts became bound up in their relation to the object of discourse, and following questions would become key factors along which struggles to define the field of terrorism expertise would develop: must experts take a moral stance in relation to terrorism? Can terrorism be studied via rational scientific analysis? Is it useful, or permissible, to delve into the political interests of terrorists? The 1960s discourse of counterinsurgency was (perhaps surprisingly) formally morally neutral: neither the moral character of insurgents or counterinsurgents, nor a moral evaluation of the practices and outcomes of insurgency or counterinsurgency, were integral to the discourse. Within the counterinsurgency discourse, even terrorism was a concept that could be set apart from morality. 9 Within the counterinsurgency discourse, terror was used as a technical term- 8 At a 1962 Rand symposium on counterinsurgency, insurgent and counterinsurgent were presented as parallel concepts: One basic difference between insurgency and counterinsurgency, in Col. Galula s definition, is that the insurgent starts out with nothing but a cause and grows to strength, while the counterinsurgent often starts with everything but a cause and gradually declines in strength to the point of weakness (Rand 1962 conference: 4). 9 Terror (generally understood as violence aimed at civilian populations) was legitimated as a tactic for use by the U.S. military. During World War II.: "The army's stated position was that terror was useful and legitimate so long as it was selective and discriminate" In guerrilla warfare manuals during and after World War II, "A common view emerged that terror was an essential tool of both guerrillas and counterguerrillas. The American manuals and assorted training materials made explicit reference to the utility- indeed, the necessity- of its use, from hostagetaking to selective assassination." This view of terror as something that could be used by both insurgents and

Stampnitzky 8 referring to types of tactics, rather than types of actors (as it later would in the terrorism discourse). For example, a 1964 article on Terror as a weapon of political agitation suggests, "it is, however, by no means inevitable that the insurgents will initiate terrorism; in some instances, they may be 'counterterrorists' reacting to the terror of the incumbents" (Thornton 1964). Participants at the 1962 RAND counterinsurgency symposium spoke of the possibility using terror wisely and selectively, and the term terrorist was generally used as a synonym for insurgents or guerrillas. 10 Within the counterinsurgency discourse, terrorism was considered unpleasant, and something to be used sparingly, but still a legitimate tool in the fighter s arsenal, and not a defining aspect of identity or moral character. This framework, in which terror was understood as a tactic rather than a morally defining act, carried over into the earliest expert analyses on terrorism in the 1970s, which drew heavily upon the counterinsurgency discourse. For example, presenters at a 1972 U.S. State Department conference on terrorism suggested that both states and insurgents/opponent groups might be terrorists, and that almost any group might take up terrorism. "Conferees generally agreed that : almost any group, under sufficient stress of unresolved grievances, will resort to terrorism; terrorists may select either symbolic or pragmatic targets; terror is very difficult to eliminate- the best move a government can make it to reduce grievances; and regimes resorting to repression tend to defeat themselves... The consensus was that nearly every variety of political and ethnic group is likely under certain (generally desperate) circumstances to resort to terrorism. Terror is a tool not confined to opposition forces; it can also be applied by established regimes" (Perenyi: 1, 4) By the mid 1970s, however, discussions of terrorism had begun to move away from the counterinsurgency framework, and towards a re-conceptualization of terrorism as an act that states/ counterinsurgents persisted through the counterinsurgency era of the 1960s, and strategy for U.S. soldiers in Vietnam. 10 ( Terror is not explicitly defined, but the meaning seems to be violence intended to impose fear upon the population.) (as opposed to the tactical use of violence) <RAND 1962 symposium p26>.

Stampnitzky 9 defined a certain type of actor. At a 1976 state dept conference on terrorism, the question of whether or not terrorists could ever be freedom fighters was hotly debated, with (according to the official report), the majority of presenters arguing that the categories were mutually exclusive. In other words, terrorism was in the process of being redefined as a category with a moral evaluation intrinsically built into it. The question of whether terrorists could be freedom fighters, although seemingly a matter of arcane semantics, is actually indicative of a crucial turning point in the history of conceptualizations of political violence. The very opposition, between terrorists and freedom fighters which would become a statement of cliché just a few years later, would have been relatively nonsensical within the earlier counterinsurgency discourse, which did not pose these as mutually exclusive categories. Whereas counterinsurgency theory assumes that insurgents are generally rational actors (especially insofar as the insurgents and counterinsurgents were configured/ imagined as parallel / roles), the question of whether or not terrorism is rational is perennially up for debate. Counterinsurgency experts generally assumed that insurgents had rational, intelligible, political motives. The report from the 1962 Rand conference on counterinsurgency starts out by discussing structural problems that may lead to guerrilla movements in different parts of the world: problems such as unemployment, inequality, and colonialism. The opening questions at this conference included what conditions cause guerrilla movements? What motivates the individual guerrillas? What are the major points of difference between communist guerrilla organizations and noncommunist insurgent movements? (Rand 1962: pp1-2). By way of contrast, as the terrorism discourse developed, the very question of whether or not terrorists had rational, objective motives would become highly politically charged. The introduction to a 1976 conference on terrorism stated that terrorism was a new barbarism, a

Stampnitzky 10 new form of warfare waged by small groups against neutrals or innocent bystanders as often as against actual foes. It is fought primarily not to win territory or even to cause destruction, but to command attention, to instill fear, and to terrorize in the hope of forcing the world to listen and to right an alleged wrong." (italics added) ((Livingston, p.19, in Livingston, Kress, and Wanek 1978). As illustrated in this quotation, the rationality of both the ends and the means of terrorists came up for question. Most irritatingly, terrorists, according to this author, are in denial about the fact that they are in fact terrorists, but are fanatics are incapable of accommodation (and thus cannot be rationally bargained with), naive, emotional, impulsive, often irrational, and fundamentally uninformed" (Livingston, p.21-22, in Livingston, Kress, and Wanek 1978). Within such a framework, how would it even possible to develop a rational theory for dealing with such creatures, let alone a rational policy response? Whereas counterinsurgency discourse generally assumed that insurgents were motivated by structural factors and had political goals, the role of the political in terrorism discourse is deeply conflicted and contradictory. The question of whether terrorism has structural causes has been highly contentious, as is that of whether or not terrorists have political goals, as well as the nature or reality of such goals: e.g., do terrorists have true political goals, or are their motivations merely ideological, or worse, nihilistic? The early period of terrorism expertise was characterized by a relative focus on grievances and external causes. For example, at the 1972 State Department conference, "The participants agreed generally that terrorism was the product of frustration induced by unresolved grievances" (Perenyi 1972:4). Whereas by 1976 State Department conference, presenters differentiated direct and permissive causes, doubted political and economic causes and structural causes more generally: "Many members of the conference doubted that the direct

Stampnitzky 11 causes of terrorism could be discovered in political or socioeconomic conditions. They were skeptical of the argument that the way to stop terrorism was to 'remove its causes', particularly when in concrete cases the causes seemed more psychological or pathological than sociopolitical" (Johnson 1976:18). As the decade wore on, it became more common for analysts to claim that terrorists goals were not rational, and perhaps not even recognizably political at all. If terrorists were conceded to be political, their goals were often categorized as not normally political, but rather pathological. A speaker at a 1977 conference opposed separatist and nationalist objectives to terrorist groups who find or rationalize their raison d être in Marxist ideology or anarchist schools of thought and exhibit an accelerating trend toward nihilism (8), further suggesting that "most terrorist groups share the same general political goals: negatively expressed, to destroy a government, alter a policy or law, oust a foreign power or economically dominant class, attack imperialism/colonialism/zionism, and so on" (11)), even suggesting that terrorism might become nihilist, seeking destruction for its own sake (35-36) (Alexander, Carlton, and Wilkinson 1979). Consequences for policy alternatives The creation of terrorism had significant consequences for the realm of possible policy responses to the problem. The framework of insurgency suggested that political violence was perpetrated by rational actors with potentially understandable motives. And while we might not agree with those motives, an understanding of these could lead, in theory, to a rational response to the problem either by addressing grievances directly, or by making intervention in the larger society in which the insurgents swam, so as to decrease popular support for their activities. In contrast, the terrorism framework as it arose in the 1970s, conceptualized

Stampnitzky 12 terrorism as a fundamentally immoral act, and worked to make the motivations of terrorists irrelevant to the understanding and combating of the problem. The most immediate effect of this was to make policy responses which took account of grievances either illegitimate, or illogical, or both. One of the first core modes of governance through which the U.S. sought to manage the problem, as I will discuss below, was organized around crime, law, and diplomacy. This response conceptualized terrorists essentially as criminals, and sought to manage the problem not through any attempt to influence terrorists or their supporters in the population directly, but rather, aimed at developing an international system of extradition and legal prosecution. In such a system, the goals and motives of the terrorists could be rendered largely irrelevant, and policy responses were focused upon influencing the actions of other states to comply with a system of regulation. This would later be superseded by approaches centered on the use of military force, first on a retaliatory basis in the 1980s and 1990s, and then through the current, preemptive, war on terror which emerged after the events of 9/11. But what all these approaches share in common is that they aim to govern terrorism as a problem without actually governing (that is, engaging with the practices and worldviews) terrorists or potential terrorists themselves. Consequences for experts In addition to its consequences on the possibilities for governance of the problem, the emergence of terrorism as the primary means of understanding political violence had significant effects for the subsequent possibilities for expertise. As terrorism solidified as an object of expert knowledge, it did not become purified (Latour 1993) of its political or moral character; rather, the expert discourse became more characterized by an intertwining of moral, political, and scientific/analytical concerns and approaches at this time. This led to persistent difficulties for those who would create rational knowledge about political violence, and can

Stampnitzky 13 again, be seen as falling along three axes of difficulty, this time as regards the relation of the analyst to his/her object of study.

Stampnitzky 14 Table 2: Three newly problematic dimensions of terrorism discourse Morality Rationality Politicization As pertains to terrorism/terrorists As pertains to terrorism experts (and their relation to the problem/ data) Necessarily immoral (slightly contested) Requirement to condemn/ possibility of morally detached/value neutral research is questioned Rationality of motives and tactics always in question Possibility of rational analysis in question Whether terrorists have political motives/ goals is contested Possibility of apolitical expertise continually in question Table 3: Insurgency vs. Terrorism Insurgency/ counterinsurgency Morality of actors a part of No definition? Rationality of actors in No question? Political motives of actors in No question? Morality of experts in Yes 11 question? Necessity for experts to morally engage? Possibility of rational analysis No in question? Possibility of apolitical Yes 12 analysis in question? Insurgents/terrorists are Yes considered parallel to their opponents (counterinsurgents/ counterterrorists) Insurgents/ terrorists resist No application of the label Expertise is defined by a No problem of definition Terrorism/ counterterrorism Yes (contested) Yes (contested) Yes (contested) Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes 11 The moral relation between experts and their object of study, however, undergoes a fundamental shift between counterinsurgency and counterterrorism. 12 Again, although the relation between politics and knowledge was highly contested under both counterinsurgency and counterterrorism, the form of this contestation would shift significantly.

Stampnitzky 15 Experts faced increasing difficulty presenting themselves and their work as legitimate, yet morally detached and separable from their object of terrorism. For example, a 1979 essay in the New York Review of Books, criticized terrorism experts for not being critical enough of terrorists (Avishai 1979). Avishai writes that two of the authors under review are social scientists who claim to be experts on terror and give advice on how to deal with it, yet critiques them for having little patience for moral argument and for writing in a style such that their tone is casual and clear of indignation, evincing a stoic attitude toward the suffering of others (Avishai 1979 p41). 13 In a somewhat similar fashion, Conor Cruise O Brien, in a 1976 review of two books by J. Bowyer Bell in the New York Review of Books, 14 writes that Mr. Bowyer Bell writes about terrorists with a degree of sympathy which the present reviewer, being perhaps oversensitive on the subject, finds moderately repugnant. He sometimes, though not consistently, adopts the language of the terrorists themselves, terming their killings "executions" or, even worse, using coy euphemisms like "elimination," and he is impressed by the "logic" or "elegance" of various bloody deeds. He thinks that "the practitioners of terror can largely be categorized on the basis of their aspirations" and resists other methods of categorizing them, such as those which would include among others the categories of lunatics and gangsters. 13 Avishai even goes so far as to suggest that some authors work may not only encourage terrorists, but even provide scientific rationales for their behavior: It is of particular interest that behavioral scientists concerned with terrorism should share so many methodological assumptions with the revolutionaries they study. That Bell and Schreiber describe terrorists in much the same language as the latter describe themselves is evident in the recent interview with German terrorist Michael Bommi Baumann, in Encounter, September 1978... Moreover, behind terrorists (and, I dare say, Bell s and Schreiber s) apparent indifference to argued analyses of right and wrong- and necessary to that indifference is in fact an argument about right and wrong, namely, that what has come to seem necessary, in view of the frequency or intensity of its occurrence, action, etc., also has claims to be right. Whatever their pretensions to acting merely by response to history s stimulus, terrorists could not have begun to speak their scientific language without having absorbed moral and epistemological views that have a long history (Avishai 1979 p44). 14 (New York Review of Books, Volume 23, Number 14 September 16, 1976 Reflections on Terrorism By Conor Cruise O'Brien).

Stampnitzky 16 A final set of difficulties emerges from the question of whether or not expertise can be separable from politics. Is, or ought, terrorism experts work necessarily political? Or can terrorism expertise be separated from political inflections and goals? While experts have attempted to "strip the term of its abusive connotations, and thus make it 'objective' or 'scientific,' (Rapoport and Alexander 1982:3) such strategies have been of limited success. Terrorism experts have been subject to de-legitimating claims of politicization from both the left and the right, and though some experts have devoted significant time and resources in attempts to purify and reform terrorism studies into an apolitical knowledge field, their work has been continually open to challenge. Recent analyses of terrorism expertise have suggested that the field has suffered from prolonged difficulties in attaining the status of an accepted scientific field (Jackson 2005; Ranstorp 2007; Silke 2004).

Stampnitzky 17 Bibliography Alexander, Yonah, David Carlton, and Paul Wilkinson. 1979. Terrorism: Theory and Practice, Edited by Y. Alexander, D. Carlton, and P. Wilkinson. Boulder, CO: Westview. Avishai, Bernard 1979. "In Cold Blood." The New York Review of Books, March 8, 1979, pp. 41-44. Becker, Jillian. 1978. "Papers submitted by Jillian Becker [et al.]." in International Scientific Conference on Terrorism. Berlin: Institute for International Scientific Exchange. Hoffman, Robert Paul. 1984. "Terrorism: A universal definition." M.A. Thesis, Criminal Justice, Claremont Graduate School. Jackson, Richard. 2005. Writing the war on terrorism: Language, politics, and counterterrorism. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Johnson, Chalmers. 1976. "Perspectives on Terrorism." in Terrorism: Special Studies 1975-1985 (microfilm collection, published 1986), edited by M. Davis. Frederick, MD: University Publications of America. Latour, Bruno. 1993. We have never been modern. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Livingston, Marius H., Lee Bruce. Kress, and Marie G. Wanek. 1978. "International terrorism in the contemporary world." in Conference on Terrorism in the Contemporary World- International Symposium, edited by M. H. Livingston, L. B. Kress, and M. G. Wanek. Glassboro State College (NJ): Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. Perenyi, Peter. 1972. "State Department Conference on Terrorism: Summary of Conference Sponsored by the Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the Planning and Coordination Staff (XR/RNAS-21)." U.S. Department of State, Washington, DC. Ranstorp, Magnus. 2007. "Mapping terrorism research: State of the art, gaps and future direction." London: Routledge. Rapoport, David C. and Yonah Alexander. 1982. The Rationalization of Terrorism. Frederick, MD: Aletheia Books, University Publications of America. Reid, Edna Ferguson. 1983. "An analysis of terrorism literature: A bibliometric and content analysis study." Ph.D. Thesis, Library Science, University of Southern California, Los Angeles. Schmid, Alex P. and Albert J. Jongman. 1988. Political terrorism: A new guide to actors, authors, concepts, data bases, theories and literature. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books. Silke, Andrew. 2004. Research on terrorism: Trends, achievements, and failures. New York: Frank Cass. Thornton, Thomas. 1964. "Terror as a weapon of political agitation." Pp. 71-99 in Internal War, edited by H. Eckstein. New York: Free Press.