ABSTRACT
Terrorism offers a model case study for what the author have called the constructionist approach to social problems. In looking at the terrorism problem, then, readers can employ the same methods and analytical tools that have proved useful when applied to familiar domestic problems of crime and social dysfunction. When readers look at the terrorism issue in the way, readers see the process by which bureaucratic interests create and sustain the image presented in the mass media and popular culture. A historical perspective, though, suggests that the scope of the terrorism problem has fluctuated quite dramatically. Any historical study indicates that, technological developments apart, the modem world faces precisely no issues in terrorism that would have surprised an observer in 1900 or 1950. Perhaps the greatest weapon for the critical consumer of terrorism claims is memory, an attribute that is reinforced by modem means of gathering and retrieving information.
