ABSTRACT
YES: An agreed concept is possible and useful
Anthony Richards
This part of the chapter argues that terrorism is still a useful analytical term, and it should, therefore, be retained. It distinguishes between different levels of analytical accomplishment in the search for a definition, namely, defining terrorism, and conceptualising terrorism. This involves a temporally contingent agreement of what terrorism might mean, and the agreement of terrorism as an analytically distinctive concept. The chapter then argues for a third option by pointing out the benefits and costs of not achieving a consensus as well as our capacity to reach such an understanding.
NO: A landscape of meaning: constructing understandings of political violence from the broken paradigm of ‘terrorism’
Dominic Bryan
This part of the chapter argues against the notion that terrorism is a useful analytical term. It explains how the labelling of particular acts of political violence – as terrorism, war or crime, for example – occurs in complex fields of meaning, culture, conflict and power. It then argues that there is no consensus on the definition of terrorism among scholars or the wider society, and as a concept, it is too simplistic and compromised to be of any real use in the academic study of political violence. It suggests that we can learn all we need to learn about political violence without recourse to the term ‘terrorism’.
