Terrorism and affordance

217 Pages·2012·0.95 MB·English

by  Taylor

Terrorism and
Affordance
New directioNs iN terrorism studies
A series edited by
max taylor
Professor of International Relations, University of St Andrews. Earlier appointments
include Director of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence
(CSTPV) at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, and Professor of Applied
Psychology at University College Cork, Ireland.
P m currie
Senior Visiting Fellow at the School of International Relations at the University of
St Andrews, Scotland.
John Horgan
Associate Professor of Science, Technology and Society and Director of the
International Center for the Study of Terrorism at Pennsylvania State University, USA.
New Directions in Terrorism Studies aims to introduce new and innovative
approaches to understanding terrorism and the terrorist. It does this by bringing
forward innovative ideas and concepts to assist the practitioner, analyst and
academic to better understand and respond to the threat of terrorism, challenging
existing assumptions and moving the debate forward into new areas.
The approach is characterized by an emphasis on intellectual quality and rigour,
interdisciplinary perspectives and a drawing together of theory and practice. The key
qualities of the series are contemporary relevance, accessibility and innovation.
Terrorism and
Affordance
Edited by
mAx tAylor
P m currie
New Directions in Terrorism Studies
Continuum International Publishing Group
A Bloomsbury Company
50 Bedford Square 80 Maiden Lane
London New York
WC1B 3DP NY 10038
www.continuumbooks.com
© Max Taylor and P M Currie, 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the permission of the publishers.
ISBN: 978-1-4411-3381-6 (hardcover)
e-ISBN: 978-1-4411-2782-2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record of this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
Contents
Contributors vii
1 Terrorism and affordance: An introduction 1
Max Taylor
2 Affordance and situational crime prevention:
Implications for counter terrorism 17
Richard Wortley
3 Conceptual and methodological explorations in
affordance and counter terrorism 33
Paul Ekblom
4 Cyber-jihad: Ideology, affordance and latent motivations 49
Gilbert Ramsay
5 Affording terrorism: Idealists and materialities in the
emergence of modern terrorism 73
Mats Fridlund
6 Affordances and the new political ecologies 93
Roy Williams
7 When are terrorists hackers? Technology,
affordance and practice 121
Gilbert Ramsay
8 Affordance, terrorism and the overestimation of
offence homogeneity 141
Jason Roach
vi coNteNts
9 Affordance as inferred opportunity? 157
Phil Unsworth, Rosie Alexander and Ken Pease
10 Conclusion 171
P M Currie
Appendix 177
Bibliography 185
Index 201
Contributors
Rosemary Alexander is currently at Cheadle Hulme School, UK.
P M Currie is a Senior Visiting Fellow at the School of International Relations,
St Andrews University, Scotland. He is a co-editor of the Continuum series,
New Directions in Terrorism Studies and a contributor to the new edition of
The Encylopaedia of Islam (Brill, 2011). His publications also include The Shrine
and Cult of Muin al-din Chishti of Ajmer (OUP, 1989; reissued 1997 and 2006)
and Dissident Irish Republicanism (Continuum, 2011). He holds degrees from
the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford.
Paul Ekblom is Professor of Design Against Crime at Central Saint Martins
College of Arts and Design, University of the Arts London, where he works on
projects ranging from preventing bag and bike theft to counter terrorism. He
also develops ‘crime frameworks’ for capturing and transferring good practice
knowledge in crime prevention more generally.
Mats Fridlund is a senior lecturer in the theory of science at the Department of
Philosophy, Linguistics and Theory of Science at the University of Gothenburg
and associated researcher at Centre for Advanced Security Theory at the
University of Copenhagen. His research focuses on the history of science and
technology of terrorism and security, and he is currently working on a project
on the role of technology in the origin and globalization of modern terrorism.
Ken Pease is a chartered forensic psychologist, currently Visiting Professor
and Fellow of University College London.
Gilbert Ramsay is a teaching fellow in the International Relations department
at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, where he completed his PhD. His
research focuses on constraints on terrorist targeting and on the multiple
consumption cultures of Al Qa’ida propaganda content.
viii coNtributors
Jason Roach is a Chartered Psychologist and a Senior Lecturer in Criminology
and Policing at the University of Huddersfield, UK. Jason has published work
on topics such as offender self-selection, terrorism and other violent crime.
His more recent work focuses on criminal investigative practice, cold case
reviews and child homicide.
Max Taylor is Professor of International Relations at the University of St
Andrews, Scotland. Prior appointments include Director of the Centre for
the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, University of St Andrews, and
Professor of Applied Psychology, University College Cork, Ireland. He is a
Forensic Psychologist with extensive research experience in terrorism and
computer-related crime. He is currently Editor of Terrorism and Political
Violence.
Superintendent Phil Unsworth recently retired from Greater Manchester
Police where he was responsible for leading the development of evidence-
based intelligence products and creating partnerships with a range of
community safety agencies.
Roy Williams is a senior lecturer in the Mathematics Department at
Portsmouth University, UK and is responsible for e-assessment and e-learning
in Math and Computing. He has consulted on e-learning and educational
media in a variety of fields, in the UK and internationally, across all sectors
of education.
Richard Wortley joined University College London in August 2010 as Director
of the Jill Dando Institute and the Head of the Department of Security and
Crime Science. His research interests centre on the role that immediate
environments play in criminal behaviour, in areas including official misconduct
in prison, whistleblowing in the public sector, child sexual abuse, internet child
exploitation and intimate partner homicide. He has published authored books
and over 50 journal articles and book chapters.
1
Terrorism and
affordance: An introduction
Max Taylor
University of St Andrews
The country – its physical features and population – is more than
just the source of all armed forces proper; it is in itself an integral
element among the factors at work in war – though only that
part which is the actual theatre of operations or has noticeable
influence on it. (von clausewitz)1
clausewitz’s comment on qualities of war may be familiar to students of
warfare and perhaps also students of terrorism, but probably less familiar
to students from other disciplines. It is a part of his discussion of the Nature
of Warfare, and his commentary on the significance of terrain in warfare that
the quotation above emphasizes is further developed later in his discussion of
Military forces. As he notes, the structure of the ground upon which a battle
is fought, and its accompanying artefacts such as hedges, fields, woods,
streams and so on shape and influence the opportunities available to both
an attacking and defending army. ‘The influence is always active; its degree
varies according to the nature of the country’2.
Clausewitz wrote in the early part of the nineteenth century for a largely
military audience, principally concerned with the actual conduct of war. His
readers might have had to face attacking a defended opponent, and would
know from experience that the opportunity to effectively conduct an attack
was limited by a range of features, the most obvious one being the nature of