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Disciplining Terror: How Experts Invented 'Terrorism'
Since 9/11 we have been told that terrorists are pathological evildoers, beyond our comprehension. Before the 1970s, however, hijackings, assassinations, and other acts we now call 'terrorism' were considered the work of rational strategic actors. 'Disciplining Terror' examines how political violence became 'terrorism,' and how this transformation ultimately led to the current 'war on terror.' Drawing upon archival research and interviews with terrorism experts, Lisa Stampnitzky traces the political and academic struggles through which experts made terrorism, and terrorism made experts. She argues that the expert discourse on terrorism operates at the boundary - itself increasingly contested - between science and politics, and between academic expertise and the state. Despite terrorism now being central to contemporary political discourse, there have been few empirical studies of terrorism experts. This book investigates how the concept of terrorism has been developed and used over recent decades.
246 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2013
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September 23, 2018
In recent years, the discourse surrounding terrorism has taken on great importance in our politics and culture. But despite the massive resources poured into studying this phenomenon, the definite meaning of "terrorism" and its galaxy of associated terms somehow remains unsettled. This book does an invaluable service by deconstructing the origins of terrorism studies, demonstrating sequentially how the study of this subject became a body of knowledge with certain ascribed qualities in the first place.
I've often wondered why terrorism analysis, along with many good scholars, tends to be a field filled with so many obvious quacks. As Stampnitzky compellingly argues, the reason is that "terrorism" as a field has always been very poorly defined. That lack of definition has meant that the field has had permeable boundaries, while its own meaning has shifted constantly over time. Not only has terrorism studies failed to concretely define itself, it has failed to erect meaningful boundaries like certifications, licenses or even experience requirements that would help it coalesce as a concrete field of study. As such, anyone can become a "terrorism expert," and many people do. The hyper-politicization of this field has not helped, as it has motivated governments and private interests to steer the field in particular directions that are useful for their purposes.
This book goes on to provide an interesting account of how "knowledge" was created in this case and how it changed over time. "Terrorism" had its origins in the counterinsurgency studies of the 50s and 60s: specifically in the imperial wars in Vietnam and Algeria. In those cases terrorism was looked at strictly as a tactic used by insurgents in situations of asymmetric warfare. But there was no concrete moral characteristic ascribed to this tactic or those that employed it. Experts openly conceded that states often employed terrorism when appropriate, and these experts were themselves concerned with the "root causes" of what was driving the conflict, rather than the tactics being used.
Contrary to our current outlook, terrorism was not associated at this time with a particular moral actor, let alone a specific type of individual believed to have a predilection to commit terrorist violence. During the wave of hijackings and other attacks conducted in the 60s, terrorism came to be viewed as a crisis management challenge, or even as a legal and insurance problem to be both legislated against and accounted for.
This approach changed markedly in the years after the 1972 Munich Olympic Games attack by Palestinian nationalists. Following that incident, a number of conferences were held where terrorism gradually began to be reified into the moral category it is today. Chief among these conferences was the 1979 Jerusalem Conference held in Israel and conducted under the aegis of future Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The attendees at this conference (and others) were largely to be people from Western academia, media and policy think tanks. These activists went on to form a network with one another where they promoted and reinforced the belief that terrorism was a uniquely irrational and immoral category of violence, as opposed to simply a tactic used in conflict.
At this time terrorism was popularly attributed to the supposed covert influence of the Soviet Union. But after the Cold War it came be defined as an essentially irrational act divorced from any political context. The "terrorist" began to occupy space as a particular type of human being separate from any category of political combatant. From here the idea of trying to understand terrorist motivations, let alone the "root causes" of conflicts, began to be characterized as foolhardy, or even as a sign of latent sympathy with terrorists. Terrorists were said to have no specific motives and were deemed to be driven simply by an unnegotiable anger and hatred.
As a result, terrorism studies gradually became a field of "anti-knowledge" where attempting to closely understand the very issue that one is studying was actively discouraged and viewed with suspicion. This toxic and essentially irrational form of discourse seems completely natural to us today. But in fact it was was consciously created over a period of decades, where terrorism moved from a legal, statistical and crisis-management problem into something closer to a secular demonology. Although (for obvious reasons) this warped form of discourse is very useful for those in power who are fighting individuals they have deemed as terrorists, it has impeded our ability to rationally combat this phenomenon and has even assisted its growth over time.
It was really enlightening to see how our foundations for understanding terrorism as a phenomenon in the modern world were created. The author employed the Foucaldian idea of discursive knowledge to help reconstruct "terrorism" from its beginnings in the mid-20th century, up to its present state. This mode of knowledge has become extremely politically consequential for both Westerners and people in the Middle East, and I would even argue that the terrorists themselves have over time come to be influenced by the ideas about them created around this subject. Such is the power of a discourse created and disseminated from what remains the world's most influential country, the United States.
This book is a must-read for those attempting to parse through the news about terrorism and understand the cottage industry of experts it continues to support.
I've often wondered why terrorism analysis, along with many good scholars, tends to be a field filled with so many obvious quacks. As Stampnitzky compellingly argues, the reason is that "terrorism" as a field has always been very poorly defined. That lack of definition has meant that the field has had permeable boundaries, while its own meaning has shifted constantly over time. Not only has terrorism studies failed to concretely define itself, it has failed to erect meaningful boundaries like certifications, licenses or even experience requirements that would help it coalesce as a concrete field of study. As such, anyone can become a "terrorism expert," and many people do. The hyper-politicization of this field has not helped, as it has motivated governments and private interests to steer the field in particular directions that are useful for their purposes.
This book goes on to provide an interesting account of how "knowledge" was created in this case and how it changed over time. "Terrorism" had its origins in the counterinsurgency studies of the 50s and 60s: specifically in the imperial wars in Vietnam and Algeria. In those cases terrorism was looked at strictly as a tactic used by insurgents in situations of asymmetric warfare. But there was no concrete moral characteristic ascribed to this tactic or those that employed it. Experts openly conceded that states often employed terrorism when appropriate, and these experts were themselves concerned with the "root causes" of what was driving the conflict, rather than the tactics being used.
Contrary to our current outlook, terrorism was not associated at this time with a particular moral actor, let alone a specific type of individual believed to have a predilection to commit terrorist violence. During the wave of hijackings and other attacks conducted in the 60s, terrorism came to be viewed as a crisis management challenge, or even as a legal and insurance problem to be both legislated against and accounted for.
This approach changed markedly in the years after the 1972 Munich Olympic Games attack by Palestinian nationalists. Following that incident, a number of conferences were held where terrorism gradually began to be reified into the moral category it is today. Chief among these conferences was the 1979 Jerusalem Conference held in Israel and conducted under the aegis of future Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The attendees at this conference (and others) were largely to be people from Western academia, media and policy think tanks. These activists went on to form a network with one another where they promoted and reinforced the belief that terrorism was a uniquely irrational and immoral category of violence, as opposed to simply a tactic used in conflict.
At this time terrorism was popularly attributed to the supposed covert influence of the Soviet Union. But after the Cold War it came be defined as an essentially irrational act divorced from any political context. The "terrorist" began to occupy space as a particular type of human being separate from any category of political combatant. From here the idea of trying to understand terrorist motivations, let alone the "root causes" of conflicts, began to be characterized as foolhardy, or even as a sign of latent sympathy with terrorists. Terrorists were said to have no specific motives and were deemed to be driven simply by an unnegotiable anger and hatred.
As a result, terrorism studies gradually became a field of "anti-knowledge" where attempting to closely understand the very issue that one is studying was actively discouraged and viewed with suspicion. This toxic and essentially irrational form of discourse seems completely natural to us today. But in fact it was was consciously created over a period of decades, where terrorism moved from a legal, statistical and crisis-management problem into something closer to a secular demonology. Although (for obvious reasons) this warped form of discourse is very useful for those in power who are fighting individuals they have deemed as terrorists, it has impeded our ability to rationally combat this phenomenon and has even assisted its growth over time.
It was really enlightening to see how our foundations for understanding terrorism as a phenomenon in the modern world were created. The author employed the Foucaldian idea of discursive knowledge to help reconstruct "terrorism" from its beginnings in the mid-20th century, up to its present state. This mode of knowledge has become extremely politically consequential for both Westerners and people in the Middle East, and I would even argue that the terrorists themselves have over time come to be influenced by the ideas about them created around this subject. Such is the power of a discourse created and disseminated from what remains the world's most influential country, the United States.
This book is a must-read for those attempting to parse through the news about terrorism and understand the cottage industry of experts it continues to support.
October 12, 2016
Edit: I'm bumping this up to 5 stars because it ages well. Truly a superb book, a must-read for our times.
This brilliant study explains how the idea of "terrorism" came to be socially constructed; how, in the last three decades, we've witnessed the emergence of a new category of human, the "terrorist." Terrorist acts (public bombings, kidnappings, etc) have existed for quite some time, but until the 1970s experts agreed that these tactics did not belong to or inhere in any particular type of actor. States could use terrorist tactics as readily as insurgent movements. To understand the phenomenon of terrorism, experts believed that we should interrogate the motives and politics of the subjects in question. In other words, "terrorists" were held to be rational actors. We may disagree with their end goals or their tactics, but it was understood that they acted with clearly definable motives in mind, such as resisting occupation or sparking a Communist revolution.
Beginning in the 1970s, a shift in the conceptualization of terrorism took place. Stampnitzky shows how, by the 1990s, terrorists were no longer spoken of as rational actors. A new category of human was born--the terrorist, who operates beyond the pale of reason, motivated only by "evil." To attempt to understand terrorists by analyzing their goals was seen as meaningless; terrorism was a category with a moral evaluation built into it, a way to describe violence that is ipso facto illegitimate. It follows that the only way to combat such a threat is what Stampnitzky calls "pre-emptive action," the dominant counterterrorism paradigm of today, where we believe we need to strike terrorists before they strike us.
It's a compelling and well-told analysis. The book's only weakness is in its account of why this shift took place. Stampnitzky studies the issue through the lens of the sociology of knowledge, stating that expert discourse on terrorism operates in a contested interstitial space between academic expertise, the state, and media. As such, terror experts produce a discourse that they are unable to control, leaving it subject to the moralizing discourse of the public sphere. In other words, the field of terrorism studies is not an institutionalized field in the Bourdieusian sense, which allows it to be put the uses of power and the state. It seems to me that this gets cause and effect backwards--that it is the usefulness of the terrorism discourse to power--particularly given the changing nature of the U.S. enemy from the 1970s onwards--which does not allow the field of terrorism studies to institutionalize. This interpretation robs the book of some of its theoretical and analytic power, since the phenomenon (the terrorism field) that she spends so much time describing is, in fact, secondary to what seems to me to be the real concern: the relationship between the idea of terrorism and the state.
As you might guess from this review, you'll get more out of this book if you have a background in the sociology of knowledge and expertise, and/or Bourdieu. But even without such background, there's much you'll find useful here. It is, without a doubt, the best book on terrorism I've read in the last decade.
This brilliant study explains how the idea of "terrorism" came to be socially constructed; how, in the last three decades, we've witnessed the emergence of a new category of human, the "terrorist." Terrorist acts (public bombings, kidnappings, etc) have existed for quite some time, but until the 1970s experts agreed that these tactics did not belong to or inhere in any particular type of actor. States could use terrorist tactics as readily as insurgent movements. To understand the phenomenon of terrorism, experts believed that we should interrogate the motives and politics of the subjects in question. In other words, "terrorists" were held to be rational actors. We may disagree with their end goals or their tactics, but it was understood that they acted with clearly definable motives in mind, such as resisting occupation or sparking a Communist revolution.
Beginning in the 1970s, a shift in the conceptualization of terrorism took place. Stampnitzky shows how, by the 1990s, terrorists were no longer spoken of as rational actors. A new category of human was born--the terrorist, who operates beyond the pale of reason, motivated only by "evil." To attempt to understand terrorists by analyzing their goals was seen as meaningless; terrorism was a category with a moral evaluation built into it, a way to describe violence that is ipso facto illegitimate. It follows that the only way to combat such a threat is what Stampnitzky calls "pre-emptive action," the dominant counterterrorism paradigm of today, where we believe we need to strike terrorists before they strike us.
It's a compelling and well-told analysis. The book's only weakness is in its account of why this shift took place. Stampnitzky studies the issue through the lens of the sociology of knowledge, stating that expert discourse on terrorism operates in a contested interstitial space between academic expertise, the state, and media. As such, terror experts produce a discourse that they are unable to control, leaving it subject to the moralizing discourse of the public sphere. In other words, the field of terrorism studies is not an institutionalized field in the Bourdieusian sense, which allows it to be put the uses of power and the state. It seems to me that this gets cause and effect backwards--that it is the usefulness of the terrorism discourse to power--particularly given the changing nature of the U.S. enemy from the 1970s onwards--which does not allow the field of terrorism studies to institutionalize. This interpretation robs the book of some of its theoretical and analytic power, since the phenomenon (the terrorism field) that she spends so much time describing is, in fact, secondary to what seems to me to be the real concern: the relationship between the idea of terrorism and the state.
As you might guess from this review, you'll get more out of this book if you have a background in the sociology of knowledge and expertise, and/or Bourdieu. But even without such background, there's much you'll find useful here. It is, without a doubt, the best book on terrorism I've read in the last decade.
September 1, 2021
A short, pretty interesting book that I nonetheless still have questions about. Stampnitsky employs a critical theory type approach to analyze terrorism expertise since the 1970s. She argues that because of the difficulty in defining terrorism, terrorist experts struggled to legitimize and institutionalize themselves in academia, think tanks, government, and the foreign policy establishment in general. While the field itself became voluminous by the late 1980s, it remain poorly organized and structured. Terrorism experts of the Brian Jenkins type largely held a rationalist view of terrorism, as in, it was a strategy of the weak employed as a rational if extreme means of achieving discrete political goals like the achievement of a Palestinian state. However, because of the weakness of the field and the moral/political heat surrounding terrorism, a counter-discourse of politicians, intellectuals, and the media arose in the mid 80s to portray terrorism as essentially irrational, purely evil, and largely pathological rather than strategic. This discourse continued into the 1990s with the rise of the "new terrorism" concept, which portrayed a shift in terrorism toward religious and racial motivations, the pursuit of mass casualties, and the possibility of WMD being used. Stampnitzky concludes that the experts' loss of control of the discourse permitted the rise of an "anti-knowledge" approach to terrorism during the early GWOT in which Bush and other figures credibly portrayed terrorism as pure evil, not needing historical or other forms of explanation.
I think Stampnitsky does a great job lining up this overall argument and showing how rival discourses about terrorism came into being. There are also tons of useful charts and graphs in here about the discipline of terrorism studies, and it covers a lot of ground/legwork that other scholars now hopefully don't have to trudge through. If you are a political scientist or historian of terrorism or of the problems of expertise more broadly, this is a must-read.
Still, I did have a few problems. FIrst, the book goes way too far in on "scare quotes." The author has created plenty of critical distance between herself and her topic, and she didn't need to go all out on these punctuation marks, which eventually become distracting. Second, the argument would have been stronger if the author had contextualized the rise of the counter-discourse, which she doesn't connect to conservatism, neoconservative, liberal hawkishness, or other broader forces the way that someone like Melani McAlister does in her book. Yes, this discourse was simplistic and harmful for good strategic thinking, but it was
Third, this book shows some of the limits of the kind of Foucauldian discourse/power analysis that is very popular in many fields. Ultimately, I think scholars should try to comment on reality, not just discourses. For example, I think that terrorism experts were responding to very real changes in the nature of international conflict in the 1970s in designing the first wave of terrorism studies: the rise of asymmetrical, international terrorism designed to garner global attention for specific, mostly nationalist causes through the use of shocking but tailored violence. I feel similarly about the 1990s: the new terrorism concept may have been a bit overblown, but we did see a shift to attempts at, and often successes at, mass casualty terrorism committed in the service of goals (the reunification of the ummah, the creation of a white ethno-state in the US, whatever the hell Aum Shinrikyo wanted) that were fantastical, inchoate, and extreme. So the experts who try to explain these trends, I think, are worth reading first, as they are trying to grapple with on the ground trends/realities, although certainly critiques like Stampnitzsky's are worth reading for thinking critically about a field.
Finally, Stampnitsky leaves the reader in an intriguing but unclear position about what the problem with terrorist experts is exactly. If they had more power in the post-911 discourse about terrorism, it seems they would have resisted the anti-knowledge approach and pushed for a more nuanced, historically accurate understanding of terrorism. So is this book a defense of experts? In the conclusion, Stamp makes the great point that, contra Foucault, experts often lose control of the thing they are trying to control by defining instead of creating a hegemonic discourse that rules out other ways of thinking. SO that means we should want more power and influence for these kinds of experts, right? It is an intriguing question for a book that, on the face of it, seems like a critique of national security experts. I'd love to see a more direct response to that question.
I think Stampnitsky does a great job lining up this overall argument and showing how rival discourses about terrorism came into being. There are also tons of useful charts and graphs in here about the discipline of terrorism studies, and it covers a lot of ground/legwork that other scholars now hopefully don't have to trudge through. If you are a political scientist or historian of terrorism or of the problems of expertise more broadly, this is a must-read.
Still, I did have a few problems. FIrst, the book goes way too far in on "scare quotes." The author has created plenty of critical distance between herself and her topic, and she didn't need to go all out on these punctuation marks, which eventually become distracting. Second, the argument would have been stronger if the author had contextualized the rise of the counter-discourse, which she doesn't connect to conservatism, neoconservative, liberal hawkishness, or other broader forces the way that someone like Melani McAlister does in her book. Yes, this discourse was simplistic and harmful for good strategic thinking, but it was
Third, this book shows some of the limits of the kind of Foucauldian discourse/power analysis that is very popular in many fields. Ultimately, I think scholars should try to comment on reality, not just discourses. For example, I think that terrorism experts were responding to very real changes in the nature of international conflict in the 1970s in designing the first wave of terrorism studies: the rise of asymmetrical, international terrorism designed to garner global attention for specific, mostly nationalist causes through the use of shocking but tailored violence. I feel similarly about the 1990s: the new terrorism concept may have been a bit overblown, but we did see a shift to attempts at, and often successes at, mass casualty terrorism committed in the service of goals (the reunification of the ummah, the creation of a white ethno-state in the US, whatever the hell Aum Shinrikyo wanted) that were fantastical, inchoate, and extreme. So the experts who try to explain these trends, I think, are worth reading first, as they are trying to grapple with on the ground trends/realities, although certainly critiques like Stampnitzsky's are worth reading for thinking critically about a field.
Finally, Stampnitsky leaves the reader in an intriguing but unclear position about what the problem with terrorist experts is exactly. If they had more power in the post-911 discourse about terrorism, it seems they would have resisted the anti-knowledge approach and pushed for a more nuanced, historically accurate understanding of terrorism. So is this book a defense of experts? In the conclusion, Stamp makes the great point that, contra Foucault, experts often lose control of the thing they are trying to control by defining instead of creating a hegemonic discourse that rules out other ways of thinking. SO that means we should want more power and influence for these kinds of experts, right? It is an intriguing question for a book that, on the face of it, seems like a critique of national security experts. I'd love to see a more direct response to that question.
December 27, 2025
This book will surprise you. Just when you thought the writing couldn’t get any worse, it does.
November 5, 2017
Terörizme yönelik bakışın, terör kavramsallaştırmalarının 1950'lerden başlayarak ABD içinde nasıl geliştiğini anlatıyor. ABD kendi geliştirdiği terör tanımını daha sonra tüm dünyaya pazarlayacağı için bunun bilinmesi yararlı. Ortalamanın üzerinde bir kitap. Yazarı titizlikle ABD'deki terör tanımlarını dönemselleştirmiş. Her bir dönemde, ABD emperyalizminin halk kurtuluş mücadelelerini gayrımeşru hale getirmek için nasıl bir ideolojik mücadele yürüttüğünü görmek mümkün.
Bugün burjuva basının, akademilerin ve devlet yöneticilerinin benimsediği muğlak, nesnellikten uzak, çarpık terörizm tanımına ulaşılması on yıllar sürmüş. Alan içinde daha demokrat bir terör tanımı getirmek isteyenlerle ("devlet teröründen de bahsetmeliyiz") halk mücadelelerini net bir şekilde gayrımeşru hale getirmek isteyenler arasındaki mücadele 1980'lerde emperyalizm tarafından kazanılmış. Ve bugünkü akıldışı, kötücül terörist anlayışına ulaşılmış. Bunu görmek ilginçti.
Kitabın en önemli eksiği sınıf perspektifinden yoksun olması. Bugün dünyada net bir terör tanımının olmayışı, bu kavramın egemen sınıfların elinde bir aptallaştırma aracı haline gelmesinin anlamları sorgulanmıyor. Örneğin Bush iktidarıyla birlikte ABD'de "11 Eylül yapıldıysa, bunun ABD'nin tüm dünyaya eziyet etmesiyle bir ilgisi olabilir" diyen liberallerin dahi düşmanlaştırıldığını görüyoruz. Emperyalizmin bu tahammülsüzlüğü nedendir? Bu başlıbaşına bir araştırma konusu.
Bugün burjuva basının, akademilerin ve devlet yöneticilerinin benimsediği muğlak, nesnellikten uzak, çarpık terörizm tanımına ulaşılması on yıllar sürmüş. Alan içinde daha demokrat bir terör tanımı getirmek isteyenlerle ("devlet teröründen de bahsetmeliyiz") halk mücadelelerini net bir şekilde gayrımeşru hale getirmek isteyenler arasındaki mücadele 1980'lerde emperyalizm tarafından kazanılmış. Ve bugünkü akıldışı, kötücül terörist anlayışına ulaşılmış. Bunu görmek ilginçti.
Kitabın en önemli eksiği sınıf perspektifinden yoksun olması. Bugün dünyada net bir terör tanımının olmayışı, bu kavramın egemen sınıfların elinde bir aptallaştırma aracı haline gelmesinin anlamları sorgulanmıyor. Örneğin Bush iktidarıyla birlikte ABD'de "11 Eylül yapıldıysa, bunun ABD'nin tüm dünyaya eziyet etmesiyle bir ilgisi olabilir" diyen liberallerin dahi düşmanlaştırıldığını görüyoruz. Emperyalizmin bu tahammülsüzlüğü nedendir? Bu başlıbaşına bir araştırma konusu.
March 23, 2025
This book was recommended by my US Foreign Policy professor. It was a great read. Stampnitzky’s writing is gripping and the content was nothing short of insightful. How terrorism, as a concept, came to be, and the role (as well as the powerlessness) of academics and researchers in the making of a discipline, but also in the collective imaginary of terrorism in America. The last few chapters are particularly important. (Also, I love that she refers to other interesting reads all throughout the book, my want to read pile kept growing as I read!). Highly recommend if you like thorough academic analysis.
May 30, 2021
Traces the contentious history and political construction of the conceptualisation of ‘terrorism’. Enjoyed the evidence gathered and the sociological analysis on which the book is based on. In particular loved the chapter on the politics of (anti)knowledge.
October 11, 2019
Fascinating.
January 20, 2020
fantastic book by Lisa Stampnitzky, on the expert and popular discourse about terrorism, and the connection between experts and policy-makers.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews