State Terror, State Violence

State Terror, State Violence PDF Author: Bettina Koch
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 365811181X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 170

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Book Description
The volume critically discusses theoretical discourses and theoretically informed case studies on state violence and state terror. How do states justify their acts of violence? How are these justifications critiqued? Although legally state terrorism does not exist, some states nonetheless commit acts of violence that qualify as state terror as a social fact. In which cases and under what circumstances do (illegitimate) acts of violence qualify as state terrorism? Geographically, the volume covers cases and discourses from the Caucasus, South East and Central Asia, the Middle East, and North America.

State Terror, State Violence

State Terror, State Violence PDF Author: Bettina Koch
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 365811181X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 170

Get Book

Book Description
The volume critically discusses theoretical discourses and theoretically informed case studies on state violence and state terror. How do states justify their acts of violence? How are these justifications critiqued? Although legally state terrorism does not exist, some states nonetheless commit acts of violence that qualify as state terror as a social fact. In which cases and under what circumstances do (illegitimate) acts of violence qualify as state terrorism? Geographically, the volume covers cases and discourses from the Caucasus, South East and Central Asia, the Middle East, and North America.

Contemporary Terror

Contemporary Terror PDF Author: David Carlton
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131742431X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
First published in 1981, this book contains papers on terrorism, presented to the International School on Disarmament and Research on Conflicts (ISODARCO). The subject is a complex one as ‘one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom-fighter’. No simple solution exist to the threat to domestic and international stability posed by the increased use of violence employed by various politically-motivated groups, challenging the authority of sovereign states. Many of the world’s leading authorities on terrorism and sub-state violence are among the contributors here, including J. Bowyer Bell, Jillian Becker, and Alessandro Silj, and participants come from a wide range of countries and professions. This book will be of interest to students of conflict and international relations, as well as policy-makers at many levels, and the general public in many countries.

When States Kill

When States Kill PDF Author: Cecilia Menjívar
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292778503
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
Since the early twentieth century, technological transfers from the United States to Latin American countries have involved technologies of violence for social control. As the chapters in this book illustrate, these technological transfers have taken various forms, including the training of Latin American military personnel in surveillance and torture and the provision of political and logistic support for campaigns of state terror. The human cost for Latin America has been enormous—thousands of Latin Americans have been murdered, disappeared, or tortured, and whole communities have been terrorized into silence. Organized by region, the essays in this book address the topic of state-sponsored terrorism in a variety of ways. Most take the perspective that state-directed political violence is a modern development of a regional political structure in which U.S. political interests weigh heavily. Others acknowledge that Latin American states enthusiastically received U.S. support for their campaigns of terror. A few see local culture and history as key factors in the implementation of state campaigns of political violence. Together, all the essays exemplify how technologies of terror have been transferred among various Latin American countries, with particular attention to the role that the United States, as a "strong" state, has played in such transfers.

Genealogies of Terrorism

Genealogies of Terrorism PDF Author: Verena Erlenbusch-Anderson
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 023154717X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
What is terrorism? What ought we to do about it? And why is it wrong? We think we have clear answers to these questions. But acts of violence, like U.S. drone strikes that indiscriminately kill civilians, and mass shootings that become terrorist attacks when suspects are identified as Muslim, suggest that definitions of terrorism are always contested. In Genealogies of Terrorism, Verena Erlenbusch-Anderson rejects attempts to define what terrorism is in favor of a historico-philosophical investigation into the conditions under which uses of this contested term become meaningful. The result is a powerful critique of the power relations that shape how we understand and theorize political violence. Tracing discourses and practices of terrorism from the French Revolution to late imperial Russia, colonized Algeria, and the post-9/11 United States, Erlenbusch-Anderson examines what we do when we name something terrorism. She offers an important corrective to attempts to develop universal definitions that assure semantic consistency and provide normative certainty, showing that terrorism means many different things and serves a wide range of political purposes. In the tradition of Michel Foucault’s genealogies, Erlenbusch-Anderson excavates the history of conceptual and practical uses of terrorism and maps the historically contingent political and material conditions that shape their emergence. She analyzes the power relations that make different modes of understanding terrorism possible and reveals their complicity in justifying the exercise of sovereign power in the name of defending the nation, class, or humanity against the terrorist enemy. Offering an engaged critique of terrorism and the mechanisms of social and political exclusion that it enables, Genealogies of Terrorism is an empirically grounded and philosophically rigorous critical history with important political implications.

Counter-Terrorism and State Political Violence

Counter-Terrorism and State Political Violence PDF Author: Scott Poynting
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0415607205
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
This edited volume aims to deepen our understanding of state power through a series of case studies of political violence arising from state ‘counter-terrorism’ strategies. The book examines how state counter-terrorism strategies are invariably underpinned by terror, in the form of state political violence. It seeks to answer three key questions: To what extent can counter-terror strategies be read as a form of state terror? How fundamental is state terror to the maintenance of a neo-liberal social order? What are the features of counter-terrorism that render it so easily reducible to state terror? In order to explore these issues, and to reach an understanding of what it means to say that the ‘war on terror’ is terror , the contributing authors draw upon case studies from a range of geographical contexts including the UK and Northern Ireland, the US and Colombia, and Sri Lanka and Tamil Eelam. Analysing these case studies from a psychological-warfare and hegemonic perspective, the book also includes two chapters from Noam Chomsky and John Pilger, which provide a global and historical context. This book will be of great interest to students of critical terrorism studies, political violence, war and conflict studies, sociology, international security and IR.

Death Squad

Death Squad PDF Author: Jeffrey A. Sluka
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812200489
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
"There is real personal danger for anthropologists who dare to speak and write against terror; by doing so, they potentially and sometimes actually bring the terror down on themselves."—Jeffrey A. Sluka, from the Introduction Death Squad is the first work to focus specifically on the anthropology of state terror. It brings together an international group of anthropologists who have done extensive research in areas marked by extreme forms of state violence and who have studied state terror from the perspective of victims and survivors. The book presents eight case studies from seven countries—Spain, India (Punjab and Kashmir), Argentina, Guatemala, Northern Ireland, Indonesia, and the Philippines—to demonstrate the cultural complexities and ambiguities of terror when viewed at the local level and from the participants' point of view. Contributors deal with such topics as the role of Loyalist death squads in the culture of terror in Northern Ireland, the three-tier mechanism of state terror in Indonesia, the complex role of religion in violence by both the state and insurgents in Punjab and Kashmir, and the ways in which "disappearances" are used to destabilize and demoralize opponents of the state in Argentina, Guatemala, and India.

State Terrorism and Human Rights

State Terrorism and Human Rights PDF Author: Gillian Duncan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136679677
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
This book aims to improve understanding of the broad trends in the utilisation of political violence by examining the use of state terror in world politics. The ending of the Cold War and the overthrow of communism in Eastern Europe led many to assume that this presaged the demise of the one-party terror regime and acceptance of Western concepts of democracy, freedom and human rights throughout the international system. But of course this did not end state terror. The totalitarian one-party state still exists in North Korea and China, and there are numerous military regimes and other forms of dictatorship where the use of terror techniques for internal control is routine. The late Professor Paul Wilkinson conceived and began this project with the intention of analysing the major types of international response to state terror, as well as their outcomes and their wider implications for the future of international relations. In keeping with this original premise, the contributors explore the history of terrorism, as well as reflecting on the need for international cooperation based on the protection of civilians and a consistent approach to intervention in conflict situations. This book will be of much interest to students of terrorism studies, political violence, human rights, genocide, and IR in general.

Colonial Terror

Colonial Terror PDF Author: Deana Heath
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192646168
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Focusing on India between the early nineteenth century and the First World War, Colonial Terror explores the centrality of the torture of Indian bodies to the law-preserving violence of colonial rule and some of the ways in which extraordinary violence was embedded in the ordinary operation of colonial states. Although enacted largely by Indians on Indian bodies, particularly by subaltern members of the police, the book argues that torture was facilitated, systematized, and ultimately sanctioned by first the East India Company and then the Raj because it benefitted the colonial regime, since rendering the police a source of terror played a key role in the construction and maitenance of state sovereignty. Drawing upon the work of both Giorgio Agamben and Michel Foucault, Colonial Terror contends, furthermore, that it is only possible to understand the terrorizing nature of the colonial police in India by viewing colonial India as a 'regime of exception' in which two different forms of exceptionality were in operation - one wrought through the exclusion of particular groups or segments of the Indian population from the law and the other by petty sovereigns in their enactment of illegal violence in the operation of the law. It was in such fertile ground, in which colonial subjects were both included within the domain of colonial law while also being abandoned by it, that torture was able to flourish.

Contemporary State Terrorism

Contemporary State Terrorism PDF Author: Richard Jackson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135245150
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
This volume aims to ‘bring the state back into terrorism studies’ and fill the notable gap that currently exists in our understanding of the ways in which states employ terrorism as a political strategy of internal governance or foreign policy. Within this broader context, the volume has a number of specific aims. First, it aims to make the argument that state terrorism is a valid and analytically useful concept which can do much to illuminate our understanding of state repression and governance, and illustrate the varieties of actors, modalities, aims, forms, and outcomes of this form of contemporary political violence. Secondly, by discussing a rich and diverse set of empirical case studies of contemporary state terrorism this volume explores and tests theoretical notions, generates new questions and provides a resource for further research. Thirdly, it contributes to a critical-normative approach to the study of terrorism more broadly and challenges dominant approaches and perspectives which assume that states, particularly Western states, are primarily victims and not perpetrators of terrorism. Given the scarceness of current and past research on state terrorism, this volume will make a genuine contribution to the wider field, particularly in terms of ongoing efforts to generate more critical approaches to the study of political terrorism. This book will be of much interest to students of critical terrorism studies, critical security studies, terrorism and political violence and political theory in general. Richard Jackson is Reader in International Politics at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. He is the founding editor of the Routledge journal, Critical Studies on Terrorism and the convenor of the BISA Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group (CSTWG). Eamon Murphy is Professor of History and International Relations at Curtin University of Technology in Western Australia. Scott Poynting is Professor in Sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University.

The State as Terrorist

The State as Terrorist PDF Author: George Lopez
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313015961
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
This volume examines the causes, consequences, and dynamics of that style of governance by force that has come to be known as state terror. The collection deals with theoretical issues and examines case applications as well. The editors distinguish among the study of oppression, repression, and state terror systems. State terrorism in the form of enforcement terrorism, economic repression, military control, and the legal oppression of apartheid in Latin America, Argentina, the Philippines, and South Africa is discussed. One chapter explores American containment policy. Theoretical chapters on state terrorism include editor George Lopez's scheme for the analysis of government terror, editor Michael Stohl's discussion of the international dimensions of this problem, and an agenda for continued investigation.