A Response to Jones and Smith: It's Not as Bad as It Seems; Or, Five Ways to Move Critical Terrorism Studies Forward

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. Here, we are arguing that "ontology" means the presumption made by the researcher about her or his relationship to the object of study. "Epistemology" means the way of knowing logically entailed by the starting ontological stance. 2. This book (or sections from it) was assigned reading for more than half of the syllabi we examined for 2007–2009 courses on political violence/terrorism. The syllabi were all from U.S.-based academic institutions and available online. 3. For instance, recently Jonathan Joseph argued against the influence of Robert Cox, neo-Gramscians, post-structural, and constructivist CTS scholars (e.g., Gunning 2007 and Jackson 2005, 2007) who are moving the project toward a discursive ontology. Joseph supports a classically critical CTS that draws from Marx, Adorno, Horkheimer, and the critical discourse analysis of Norman Fairclough who focused on both the texts that generate meaning and the "non-semiotic features of social structure" that constrain discourse (2009, 94–95 & 97). While Joseph identifies Robert Cox as moving too far in the intersubjective direction, from the perspective of a completely constructivist perspective we argue for, Cox and Joseph are both ontological dualists. 4. For a review of the classification of the various schools of critical security studies, see Wæver (2004) Wæver, Ole. Aberystwyth, Paris, Copenhagen: New "schools" in security theory and origins between core and periphery. Paper presented at the 45th Annual Convention of the International Studies Association. March17–20, Montreal, Canada. [Google Scholar], c.a.s.e Collective (2006), and Krause and Williams (1997). In terrorism studies, such classification does not exist as all "critical" scholarship is assumed to work similar presuppositions, including emancipation and "relativist pall" (Jones and Smith 2009). 5. Patrick Thaddeus Jackson (2008) argues that all social science speaks from an ontologically distinct perspective that makes certain presuppositions. There is no presuppositionless social science, in other words. 6. This point was also raised by Alexander Wendt who argued that explaining and understanding are both kinds of explanations. 7. Here, our understanding is that terrorism is a symbolic category that entities—individuals, states, communities—use in the process of constituting their and others' identities. 8. For more on non-variables-based or "configurational" causality, see Jackson (2006) Jackson, Patrick Thaddeus. 2006. "Making sense of making sense: Configurational analysis and the double hermeneutic". In Interpretation and method: Empirical research methods and the interpretive turn, Edited by: Yanow, Dvora and Schwartz-Shea, Peregrine. 264–280. London and New York: M. E. Sharpe. [Google Scholar] 9. Tilly outlines both constitutional and causal mechanisms in chapter 9. Similarly, Gurbrium and Holstein note that ethnomethodologists appeal to conversational mechanisms to explain how interactions, selves, and situations are reflexively constructed on the spot. 10. Their relationship is more complex and dynamic, to be sure, as Jackson indicates by creatively rereading Wendt's interpretation of Hegel's master-slave example: "Masters do not cause slaves, and vice versa, but the master–slave relationship is causally involved in the processes which maintain both 'masters' and 'slaves,' as it is referenced by the people involved in maintaining the social institution" (Jackson 2004 Jackson, Patrick Thaddeus. 2004. Hegel's house, or, "People are states too.". Review of International Studies, 30: 281–287. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 282). Jackson directly critiques Wendt's reading of the master–slave relationship, which goes like this: "masters and slaves are caused by the contingent interactions of human beings; they are constituted by the social structure known as slavery" (1999, 25). 11. For a longer discussion of "relativism," see Edwards, Ashmore, and Potter, (1995), 25–49; Reprinted as Derek Edwards, Malcolm Ashmore, and Jonathan Potter, "Death and Furniture: Arguments Against Relativism," in Mary Gergen and Kenneth Gergen, eds., Social Construction: A Reader (London and Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2003), 231–236. 12. By reflexivity, we mean the act of turning back on oneself, of reflecting on oneself (Davies 2008, 4) and, in more comprehensive instances, of reflecting on one's tools of analysis and how they are implicated in socially constructing a particular reality (Pollner 1991; Jackson 2008 Jackson, Patrick Thaddeus. 2008. Foregrounding ontology: Dualism, monism and IR theory. Review of International Studies, 34(1): 129–153. [Google Scholar]).