Browse Hierarchy HIST7011: Terrorism in Context

This module locates contemporary terrorism in its historical context by considering its evolution since the late 19th century when anarchists pioneered the use of violence directed against civil society and symbolic political targets as a technique for effecting revolutionary change. It evaluates a variety of conflicting models of the phenomenon within a perspective on modern politics informed by a theory of modernism as a radical reaction against the disembedding impact of modernity. It tests their heuristic value in relationship to case-studies in four contexts that generate acts of terrorism: the politicization of religion as a result of threats to traditional communities; the sacralisation of politics by secular ideological movements; the lone-wolf sense of a mission to help precipitate change; the state oppression of perceived 'enemies'.