16. TERRORISM & 17. STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE

Question 1

Politically motivated tactic involving the threat or use of force or violence in which the pursuit of publicity plays a significant role

Answer 1

Terrorism

Question 2

An [1] anxiety-inspiring method of repeated [2] violent action, employed by (semi-) [3] clandestine individual, group, or state actors, for [4] idiosyncratic, criminal, or political reasons, whereby - in contrast to assassination - the direct targets of violence are not the main targets. The [5] immediate human victims of violence are generally chosen [6] randomly (targets of opportunity) or [7] selectively (representative or symbolic targets) from a target population, and serve as message generators. [8] Threat- and violence-based [9] communication processes between terrorist (organization), (imperiled) victims, and main targets are used to [10] manipulate the main target (audience(s)), turning it into a [11] target of terror, a [12] target of demands, or a [13] target of attention, depending on whether [14] intimidation, [15] coercion, or [16] propaganda is primarily sought.

Answer 2

Terrorism

Question 3

[THEORY] Terrorism is most likely when people experience ‘collective strains’ that are: (a) high in magnitude, with civilians affected; (b) unjust; and (c) inflicted by significantly more powerful others, including ‘complicit’ civilians, with whom members of the strained collectivity have weak ties

Answer 3

General strain theory

Question 4

[THEORY] Terrorism has a psychic moment or a focal point (like-minded individuals decide to engage in terrorism)

Answer 4

Game theory (from Thomas Schelling)

Question 5

[THEORY] - Terrorists are brainwashed ostensibly serves as an objective and value-free causal explanation: X became a terrorist because of Y’s bad influence

• It also serves as a delegitimizing device since it contains the unmistakable and highly moralized implication that joining a terrorist group isn’t actually a conscious choice predicated on reasons.
• Rather, an occurrence orchestrated by others, a process that takes place without the knowledge of the person who undergoes it. Terrorists, in other words, are suckers, fools, the instruments of someone else’s will and evil designs.
• Promotes the reassuring myth that the roots of terrorism lie away from and beyond a given moral order

Answer 5

Zoolander Theory

Question 6

[THEORY] - Terrorism must not be seen as a syndrome but as a method of social and political influence

• The attributes of terrorists are shaped by processes of social interaction
• Terrorist organizations can be analyzed by analogy with other social movements
• Terrorism only is possible when terrorists have access to certain resources
• The decision to begin and sustain a terrorist campaign is always legitimized by an extreme ideology

Answer 6

Psychosocial theory

Question 7

Psychosocial effects of terrorism

Answer 7

Depersonalization, social cohesion, conformity/obedience, and bipolar worldview

Question 8

Refers to systematic ways in which social structures harm or otherwise disadvantage individuals

Answer 8

Structural violence

Question 9

Subtle, often invisible, and often has no one specific person who can be held responsible (in contrast to behavioral violence)

Answer 9

Structural violence

Question 10

Who coined the term ‘structural’ violence

Answer 10

Johan Gatung

Question 11

“The increased rates of death and disability suffered by those who occupy the bottom rungs of society, as contrasted with the relatively lower death rates experienced by those who are above them”

“These “excess deaths” as “non-natural” and attributes them to the stress, shame, discrimination, and denigration that results from lower status”

Answer 11

James Gilligan

Question 12

“Avoidable limitations (political, economic, religious, cultural, or legal) society places on groups of people that constrain them from achieving the quality of life that would have otherwise been possible”

“A power system wherein social structures or institutions cause harm to people in a way that results in maldevelopment or deprivation”

Answer 12

Bandy X Lee

Question 13

Aspects of a culture that can be used to justify or legitimize direct or structural violence, and may be exemplified by religion and ideology, language and art, empirical science and formal science;
Highlights the ways the act of direct violence and the fact of structural violence are legitimized and thus made acceptable in society.

Answer 13

Cultural violence