Contributors

Abstract

Socioeconomic data supplied by the FBI on the backgrounds of 280 known right‐ and left‐wing terrorists active in the United States during the late 1960s and early 1970s was tabulated. Isolating for right‐left affiliation, membership status, and gender, seven variables were examined and used to confirm prevailing assumptions regarding the socioeconomic status of right‐ versus left‐wing terrorists active during this period. Findings support clear socioeconomic differences between right‐wing and left‐wing terrorists and emphasize the dominant position of women within left‐wing organizations. Surprising evidence revealed that considerable class differences exist within right‐wing groups between rank‐and‐file members and the leadership core.     

Resurgent religious terrorism: A study of some of the Lebanese Shi'a contemporary terrorism

Abstract

This study introduces the concept of geocultural immobility. A minority's geocultural immobility is identified as an imposed low geographic mobility within a nation with low cultural pluralism. It establishes the Lebanese Shi'a geocultural immobility, to which it attributes their religious resurgence. This Lebanese Shi'a religious resurgence is proven in this research to produce the zealots needed by religious terrorist organizations. This study also introduces and defines religious terrorism as violent acts performed by elements of religious organizations or sects, growing out of a commitment to communicate a divine message. It makes distinctions among religious terrorism, secular terrorism, and fighters for religious freedom, which are based on the actors' motives, affinities, and consciousness of the maliciousness of their acts. The primary and secondary data and the quasiexperiment in this research support its special hypotheses. They indicate a statistical correlation between eight Lebanese Shi ‘a cultural and religious attributes.     

Rewriting the “dirty war”: State terrorism reinterpreted by the press in Argentina during the transition to democracy

Abstract

The Argentine press reinterpreted the period of dictatorial military rule (1976–1983) in terms of an interest in the continuity of democratic protections. La Voz del Interior, the newspaper of record in the provincial capital and second largest city of Cordoba, sought to censure, subordinate, and yet reintegrate the military within a democratic institutional ideology. This study uses discourse analysis to characterize 10 elements of a model of coverage of state‐sponsored terrorism: (1) perpetrators, (2) victims, (3) target population, (4) violence and violation, (5) motives or intentions of the perpetrators, (6) fear or terror among the populace, (7) outcomes or changes in the target population, (8) news sources, (9) remedies and projects, (10) and probable responses or appropriated uses by readers or the press. In 1985–1986, when the elected government sought to judge and castigate senior junta commanders, La Voz supported establishment continuity by legitimating societal actors, including the military, even though its members were perceived as having violated basic societal values.     

Terrorism and security in the Caribbean: The 1976 Cubana disaster off Barbados

Abstract

This study is an attempt to examine the Cubana airline crash in the light of political terrorism in the Caribbean. With respect to the selected case, the research endeavor will analyze the activities of the terrorists. In so doing, the writer will determine the category within which the Cubana airline disaster falls within Mickolus’ typology.¹ In addition, the motivation of the terrorists as well as limited aspects of some of the legal issues that arose with regard to the Cubana crash are discussed. Finally, there is some attempt to determine the effects of the Cubana disaster on the Caribbean and on Barbados in particular.     

The rise of film production and the politics of the star system in South Africa

ABSTRACT

The rise of film production and the ubiquitous presence of the ‘new wave’ of South African films on the international scene in recent years have raised expectations amongst local film stars hoping to get their biggest break by taking leading roles in major South African productions. However, most of these films – particularly co-productions – have continuously used foreign stars in leading roles. As a result, local stars have constantly voiced concerns about the proliferation of foreign artists in leading roles in South African productions. Many explanations have been offered in trying to understand why filmmakers tend to cast a foreign star when a local one could probably do a better job (in, for example, portraying a local icon like Nelson Mandela) and still command a lesser fee. However, this article puts forward that most of these arguments are based on intuition rather than on the real dynamics and externalities governing this practice. The article attempts to make sense of this issue by arguing that the rationale for this practice stems from a film being a high-risk investment that it is driven by the broader financial imperatives of film production. The article offers empirical evidence to suggest that stars do not add economic value to the film, but to themselves (see Elberse 2005), since the bulk of the money goes towards their appearance fees. It is concluded that the traditional model guiding film finance and the logic behind it need to be looked at afresh, given the fact that several films have failed at the box office, both locally and internationally, despite featuring major foreign stars, compared to the massive success of some local films (e.g., Jerusalema, Tsotsi and Yesterday) with local stars in the leading roles.     

Ritual,strategy, and deep culture in the Chechen national movement

This paper probes the dichotomy between strategic performance of cultural text and a strong approach to culture that sees fundamental texts as encompassing and determining social action. The central question posed is whether the paradigmatic emphasis on strategy in cultural analysis of protest and social movements misses the compelling influences that cultural texts may exert under certain conditions. Regarding protest movements and political contention, I am especially interested in the ‘deep textual grammar’ of the conflict, which can strongly constrain and guide social action. By identifying and analysing the deep cultural text of the Chechen nationalist movement for the period 1989–1999, this study shows that, in addition to strategic decisions, movement trajectories are sometimes strongly – almost ritualistically – culturally determined. As a first step towards reconceptualising the role of culture in social movements and to spur further investigation, this paper offers several propositions derived from the Chechen case about the relationship of deep culture and mobilisation.     

Critical terrorism studies: an activist scholar perspective

This thematic analysis examines the applicability of Gustavo Correa's constructs of horizontal and vertical honour with regard to prestige as reflected in 21 statements by Osama Bin Laden (OBL) between 2002 and 2008. The relevance of Correa's theory pivots upon whether the individual is considered as the primary locus of honour, as Correa seemed to imply. There was limited support and substantial disconfirming evidence under this condition. Correa's theory appears more applicable to honour when the Ummah rather than OBL's person is considered as the primary locus of honour, with the individual's prestige a derivative of group membership. Under this condition, supported hypotheses derived from the theory include honour being rooted in divinity; vertical and horizontal aspects of honour being mutually constitutive; vertical honour being established with the creation of the Ummah through rank (insofar as the Ummah is presumed precedent above all non-Muslims), competition (including warfare) and functioning as an ideology hierarchically differentiating Muslims from non-Muslims; horizontal honour being gendered (with domination by non-Muslims situating the Ummah in a feminised position). A notable limitation of the theory is that it does not predict or account for the geospatial reification of group honour, whereby the establishment, defence, violation and exoneration of Islamic honour is discussed in terms of establishment, defence, invasion and forceful expulsion of non-Muslims from Islamic territory. Implications of honour are discussed with regard to the Islamist geospatial dichotomy of Islamic versus non-Islamic territories, efforts to encourage disengagement from terrorism and de-radicalisation within non-Islamic settings, legitimisation of complex phenomena such as jihad or suicide bombing according to frameworks of martyrdom and realistic efforts to win hearts and minds within the Islamic world.     

Veil and four walls: a state of terror in Pakistan 1

The understanding of terrorism should be expanded to encompass the types of violence most often experienced by women, such as rape. Pakistani men, soldiers and civilians have used rape as a strategy of terrorism against Pakistan's women, particularly those who dare to transgress existing social hierarchies or who belong to stigmatized social groups. Moreover, the complex and sometimes contradictory set of criminal, Islamic, and tribal laws on rape and ‘honour killings’ give women little recourse against gender violence and even permit their re-victimization.     

Torture and terrorism: an interview with Moazzam Begg

This article presents some of the findings of research on issues surrounding teaching terrorism and political violence at UK higher education institutions. It reports the results of a survey of UK institutions of higher education on their responses to government and other pressures in relation to terrorism. The data show a minority of universities have developed systems, policies or procedures for ‘preventing violent extremism’, while a significant number have developed close cooperation and collaboration with state counterterrorism policies raising potential issues of academic freedom. This article then examines three high-profile cases – incidents where universities, lecturers and students have come under political and legal pressures over the content of terrorism courses or accusations of ‘radicalisation’ on campus. It suggests that these pressures can be and sometimes are resisted, but that they have on occasion effectively narrowed the scope of academic freedom in practise with the danger that a further chilling effect follows in their wake.