Turning to Political Violence : : The Emergence of Terrorism / / Marc Sageman.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter EBOOK PACKAGE COMPLETE 2017
• VerfasserIn: Sageman, Marc,
• Place / Publishing House: Philadelphia : : University of Pennsylvania Press, , [2017]; ©2017
• Year of Publication: 2017
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (520 p.)

What motivates those who commit violence in the name of political beliefs? Terrorism today is not solely the preserve of Islam, nor is it a new phenomenon. It emerges from social processes and conditions common to societies throughout modern history, and the story of its origins spans centuries, encompassing numerous radical and revolutionary movements.Marc Sageman is a forensic psychiatrist and government counterterrorism consultant whose bestselling books Understanding Terror Networks and Leaderless Jihad provide a detailed, damning corrective to commonplace yet simplistic notions of Islamist terrorism. In a comprehensive new book, Turning to Political Violence, Sageman examines the history and theory of political violence in the West. He excavates primary sources surrounding key instances of modern political violence, looking for patterns across a range of case studies spanning the French Revolution, through late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century revolutionaries and anarchists in Russia and the United States, to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and the start of World War I. In contrast to one-dimensional portraits of terrorist "monsters" offered by governments and media throughout history, these accounts offer complex and intricate portraits of individuals engaged in struggles with identity, injustice, and revenge who may be empowered by a sense of love and self-sacrifice.Arguing against easy assumptions that attribute terrorism to extremist ideology, and counter to mainstream academic explanations such as rational choice theory, Sageman develops a theoretical model based on the concept of social identity. His analysis focuses on the complex dynamic between the state and disaffected citizens that leads some to disillusionment and moral outrage-and a few to mass murder. Sageman's account offers a paradigm-shifting perspective on terrorism that yields counterintuitive implications for the ways liberal democracies can and should confront political violence.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- 1. A Model of the Turn to Political Violence -- 2. The French Revolution and the Emergence of Modern Political Violence -- 3. Political Violence from the Restoration to the Paris Commune -- 4. The Professionalization of Terroristic Violence in Russia -- 5. Anarchism and the Expansion of Political Violence -- 6. The Specialized Terrorist Organization: The PSR Combat Unit 1902-1908 -- 7. Banditry, the End of a World, and Indiscriminate Political Violence -- 8. Policy Implications -- Appendix. Testing the Social Identity Perspective Model of the Turn to Political Violence -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- Acknowledgments