Researching race, racialisation, and racism in critical terrorism studies: clarifying conceptual ambiguities

Abstract

This article seeks to ameliorate the conceptual ambiguities surrounding the concepts of race, racialisation, and racism within Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS), as well as encourage the use of these concepts. Race is a key signifier in counter-terrorism discourse, yet its meaning is often taken for granted or left unexplored in CTS. Hence, this article proposes definitions of race, racialisation, and racism that make the concepts into an analytical lens. In developing these definitions, it employs a marginally adapted version of Gerring's criterial framework for concept formation. The article argues that the core attributes of the concepts race, racialisation, and racism are: (A) their socially constructed nature; (B) categorisation of a group as the "other"; (C) naturalisation; and (D) being concerned with community-like groups. The proposed definitions build on similarities and navigate differences in how the concepts are currently given meaning in CTS research. Considering that CTS is embedded in the context of 9/11, the concepts of race, racialisation, and racism may help to place counter-terrorism discourses and practices in a broader historical and political context and analyse the justifications supporting these discourses.

Terrorism Studies beyond counter-counterterrorism: opening the door to Jenseits

“…Unlike Jarvis' 2009 review, which argues for a critical corrective to CTS, these critiques outline a reflexive, postcolonial study of terror which is distinct from CTS in both its theoretical foundations and case study focus-a move which Mohammed (2022, 418) describes as 'epistemological disobedience' (see also Mohammed 2021;Managhan 2017). What is at stake in their approach is the sustained critique of colonial epistemologies and the discursive-material processes through which their referent objects are formed: the routinised violences of statecraft which make invisible bodies whose exclusion is constitutive of white supremacy and US neo-imperial power in contemporary global politics (see Dixit 2014;Erlenbusch-Anderson 2018;Groothuis 2020;Heike Schotten 2018). Not simply an account of who is fighting whom and whose violence is more reprehensible, but a reflection on the conditions which make such conflict possible.…”

Racialisation and counter-radicalisation: a study of Dutch policy frameworks

“…In simpler terms, terrorism is associated with Muslims and Muslims with terrorism; the fear of a terrorist threat that is unknown, yet will come, is embodied by ‘the Muslim’ (Selod 2018 ; Sharma and Nijjar 2018 ). Though these studies employ the concept of racialisation in their critiques, an explanation of what the authors take it to mean—and how it can be linked to religion—is often absent (Groothuis 2020 ). Because racialisation can be considered a contested concept, the next section elaborates on the interpretation employed in this paper.…”

Decolonising Terrorism Journals

“…Coloniality exists in economics, politics, culture, media, technology, academia and relevant for this paper, in the terrorism industry. In the case of academia, the coloniality of knowledge is very much a part of academic life, which also means that it is also present in the knowledge production side of the terrorism industry in the form of orientalism [13,15,34,35]. The reason for this is because the knowledge production side of the terrorism industry sits inside academia.…”