ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts of key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of the book. The primary objective of the book has been to ask why terrorism has become such a fundamental concern and to illuminate the contradictions that arise in the treatment of terrorism as a social problem in the context of an uneven and divided world. Jock Young argues that the influence of this fetishism with numbers not only takes its toll on what is considered to be acceptable criminological work but also rests on unsound assumptions about social reality. Although academic criminology as a profession is quite properly divided in regard to values, methodologies and politics, resistance to governmental attempts to erode the professional ideals of autonomy and independence in knowledge production is in the collective interests of criminology, criminologists and all their diverse public. The contradiction between the cultural expectation of emancipation and the material experience of exploitation has profound consequences.
