Britain and Terrorism

"By applying sociological insights, most notably influenced by the work of Norbert Elias, to the 250 year development of terrorism in the UK, Michael Dunning has produced an impressively insightful and innovative book. Britain and Terrorism is founded upon a refreshing breadth of expertise that brings to the forefront the social conditions both behind the designation of behaviour as terrorism and the acts that are undertaken by designated terrorists. Consequently this book should be essential reading for anyone who is keen to gain a thoroughly well informed and detached analysis of the concept of terrorism and associated actions. —Stephen Vertigans, Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, UK "Dunning offers a long-term view of the changing perception, as well as the practice, of terrorism. It avoids especially the fallacy of trying to understand it through the psychology of the terrorist alone. The book invokes the spirit of Norbert Elias, and is a worthy contribution to that classic tradition." —Stephen Mennell, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, University College Dublin. Challenging the standard paradigm of terrorism research through the use of Norbert Elias’s figurational sociology, Michael Dunning explores the development of terrorism in Britain over the past two centuries, focusing on long-term processes and shifting power dynamics. In so doing, he demonstrates that terrorism as a concept and designation is entwined with its antithesis, civilization. A range of process sociological concepts are deployed to tease out the sociogenesis of terrorism as part of Britain’s relationships with France, Ireland, Germany, the Soviet Union, the industrial working classes, its colonies, and, most recently, jihadism. In keeping with the figurational tradition, Dunning examines the relationships between broad, macro-level processes and processes at the level of individual psyches, showing that terrorism is not merely a ‘thing’ done to a group, but part of a complex web of interdependent relations. Michael Dunning is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Leicester, UK. His primary research interests include the processes and relationships that contribute to the development of terrorism, ‘radicalisation’ and extremism.