ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to establish what might be meant when we use the term violence. Through the discussion of Galtung, Young, Critchley and others, the aim is to show that the term violence can be used to describe a great many different forms of violence. Keeping with Weber’s ideal-typical construction, certain elements from these various conceptualisations and theories are drawn out, and an ideal-type is constructed. This type, it is argued, is able to understand and explain how acts of violence are never one, but always a double-act of violence/counter-violence. Thus, new acts of violence add to layers of meaning and violent debris to the history. In regard to the study of terrorism, this means that an act of terrorism, which is an act of violence, does not happen out of the blue, but that it is an event with a history, and is a form of violence/counter-violence. As such, the argument that there is such a thing as legitimate violence is rejected. Conceptualising violence thus is a key conceptual move, which defines the Critical theory of counterterrorism.
