Author: Sandra Walklate, Gabe Mythen
ISBN No: 978-0-415-62653-8
Review date: 15/12/2025
No of pages: 194
Publisher: Routledge
Publisher URL:
https://ww.routledge.com/books/details/9780415626538/
Year of publication: 07/10/2014
Brief:
Contradictions of Terrorism: Security, risk and resilience
price
£45
The contradictions of terrorism, as set out in the title of a book by two Liverpool sociologists, are in the way terrorism is dealt with (’vectored through’) power, inequality and injustice, to quote from their introduction. While much changed with 9-11, the book does not forget that the UK had political violence, from the IRA for instance, before 2001. So what’s new about ‘the war on terror’? The threat comes now from Islamic fundamentalism.
Some of the arguments in the book fit neatly with the concepts of security management – risk, and more recently resilience; and the phenomenon of ‘risk creep’ as some choose to over-protect from risks. The authors argue that the ‘war on terror has resulted in a raft of pre-emptive legislation, particularly in the United States and the UK’.
The book could do better if it were to cover the state and other academics less, and instead look more at what businesses have done to keep going even in hazardous places. Corporate security, counter-terrorism and resilience in other words. The authors have a point in their conclusion when (quoting another academic) they note that the risk of being killed in a terrorist attack ranks near that of being killed in a DIY accident or a lightning strike. Why then all the spending and laws and warnings? Partly because it makes better and more regular headlines in the mass media than ‘man struck by lightning’; more needs to be said about how the ‘war on terror’ is media-driven (also by the terrorists). Partly, because spending and preparedness does, we presume, deter and prevent acts of terror, whereas we cannot prevent thunder and lightning. Partly, the terrorists are interested in hitting those in authority, including those making the laws; as during the IRA’s campaigns. And while it’s proper to quote young English Muslims who have been stopped and searched by police, and in fairness the authors explicitly did not set out to write a history of terrorism, surely in any book about terrorism there should be more about the actual terrorists – what are they up to and what do they want?!
Contradictions of Terrorism: Security, risk and resilience, by Sandra Walklate, Gabe Mythen. Published 2014 by Routledge. Visit www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415626538/. Paperback, 194 pages, ISBN 978-0-415-62653-8.
Chapters: Introduction 1. 9/11: ‘Risk Creep’, Fear and Securitization 2. Constructing New Terrorism: Discourse, Representation and Ideology 3. The War on Terror: Power, Violence and Hegemony 4. Countering Terrorism? Risk, Pre-emption and Partial Securities 5. Terrorism and Exclusion: risky subjects, suspect populations 6. Managing Terrorism: From Risk to Resilience? Conclusion: (Re)Orienting criminology.
