Looking beyond waves and datasets: “cultures of terrorism” and the future of history in terrorism studies

ABSTRACT

Frequent observations about the lack of historical work in terrorism studies pose questions about history’s place – and its relevance even – in the field. Why have historians largely failed to engage with terrorism studies? And why have terrorism studies scholars generally failed to engage with history? This article suggests that the dominance of social scientific research methods, the quest for “rules” and models, and the prizing of quantitative data in terrorism studies, combined with historians’ own reluctance to foreground the contemporary relevance of their work, have led to the underrepresentation of history. It calls on historians to demonstrate the value of qualitative research methods to notions of contemporary terrorist violence using a “cultures of terrorism” approach in the context of Critical Terrorism Studies.

KEYWORDS:

• Terrorism research
• history
• approaches
• methods
• research topics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. When I refer to “terrorism studies” in this article, I include both “orthodox” and “Critical” terrorism studies, unless stated otherwise.

2. I define the social sciences to include international relations, political science, sociology, and psychology https://acss.org.uk/what-is-social-science/

3. Laqueur had used the term “wave” in 1979 to describe the “ups and downs” of historical terrorism, though his conception of the wave depended more on the terrorists’ choice of weapon than their political goal.

4. The historian was Richard English. The other people consulted were: Shazad Ali, Christine Boelema Robertus, Boaz Ganor, Paul Gill, Rohan Gunaratna, Berto Jongman, Daniel Koehler, Gary LaFree, Clark McCauley, John F. Morrison, Kumar Ramakrishna, Bart Schuurman, Ryan Scrivens, Michael S. Stohl, Judith Tinnes, Ahmet Yayla, and Aaron Zelin.

5. “The essential point of historical inquiry is not to intervene in contemporary debates or to learn lessons, sins that historians learn to denounce as ‘presentism’ in their first days of graduate school. Yet too rigid an adherence to such strictures can lead to obscurantism and disengagement, as if historians have nothing to say about the day’s most pressing social questions” (Gage 2011, 94).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Chris Millington

Chris Millington is Reader in Modern European History at Manchester Metropolitan University UK. He has published extensively on fascism and political violence in interwar France. His latest book is The Invention of Terrorism in France, 1904-1939, from Stanford University Press.