EDITORIAL: HOW HAS TERRORISM AFFECTED OUR DAILY LIVES
POST 9/11?
Korstanje M E (2017) “Editorial”. In Terrorism in the global Village, how terrorism
affected our daily lives?. New York, Nova Science Pubs.
Endorsements and Praise of the book.
Terrorism in the Global Village: how terrorism affected our lives. 2017
This is a nice contribution to an area of terrorism studies that has gotten too little
scholarly attention -- the issue of how countries respond to terrorist attacks". (Max
Abrahms - Assistant Professor of Political Science and Public Policy, Northeastern
University, US)
"Serious students of terrorism and state sponsored violence will grapple with the
insights by international scholars about how everyday life and social institutions are
affected by terrorist acts themselves, as well as the controlling and surveillance
practices enacted to combat terrorism. Terrorism in the Global Village is a gem in the
expanding study of conflict and social change." (David Altheide - Regents Professor
Emeritus. Arizona State University, US).
Terrorism has become the defining form of political, ideological and religious conflict
of our time. Decades of asymmetric struggle have honed the ability of radicalized
factions to attack and destabilize much larger and richer societies, using fear as their
primary weapon, while the need to protect these societies has led to an unprecedented
extension of the role and reach of the security forces, thereby removing much of the
privacy that previous generations could take for granted. The boundaries between
organized crime and terrorist networks have become increasingly blurred, as the new
generation of terrorists has learned how to reach out through families, personal contacts
and the internet to recruit violent and disaffected youth around the world. The threats
that we face are now everywhere, and many of them are almost invisible. This has
become a struggle of faith, values and belief, and it remains to be seen which will
prevail. (Professor Anthony Clayton, MA, PhD, FCAS, FTWAS, CD - University of
West Indies, Jamaica)
Maximiliano E Korstanje
University of Palermo, Argentina
[email protected]
The idea of editing a book dedicated to cover issued related to
terrorism seems not to be new, even, after 9/11 many voices focused
on terrorism as the main threat of West, democracy and
cosmopolitan spirit (Alex 2004). In social sciences, scholars adopted
two radical positions that obscured more than clarified. On one
hand, the attacks of World Trade Centre woke up Americans from
the slumber they were, evincing how in other cultures a sentiment of
anti-Americanism flourished (Huntington, 1997; Keohane, 2002;
Revel 2003). Neo-realism understood that poverty or resentment
against West were consequences of years of abandonment by State,
conjoined to crises that led to political instability. The lack of
democracy was the key factor behind the virus of terrorism spread
(Gregory III, 2005). Adopted by policy-makers, security experts,
right-wind professors and officials, the idea that terrorism was a
result of the clash of civilization, or contradictory cultural values
enrooted in Christendom and Islam, dominated the agenda and the
main discourse of the media. However, on another hand, a group of
left-wind intellectuals focused on the radical changes opened by a
much deeper process of securitization the War on terror initiated.
What is clear is that nation-states in global North, took advantage of
the fear terrorism inspires to instil economic policies (neoliberalism) which otherwise would be neglected by citizens (Bauman
2000; Altheide, 2006; Eid, 2014; Skoll, 2007; Skoll & Korstanje,
2013; Korstanje 2015).
At some extent, whether classic cells perpetrated their attacks on
police chiefs, or top-ranked politicians, Al-Qaeda and ISIS targets
global tourists and travellers. For analysts the problem lies in the
fact that leisure-spots, where people look to escape from rules and
control, became in the main targets of international terrorism
(Korstanje, Tzanelli & Clayton, 2014). Far from being closer to a
consensus, both academic waves struggle to impose their view on
what terrorism is. This does not represent the main goals of this
edited book which concentrates the contributions of most
authorative voices in terrorism fields. At a closer look, I attempted
during my career to create a bridge between these two contrasting
theories, but in doing so, I realized our impossibility as social
scientists to study empirically terrorism. Since terrorists are legally
labelled as criminals, ethnographies or story lives of terrorists are
methodologies which are avoided by researchers. This happens
simply because state and security forces may exert considerable
coaction and violence over those ethnographers who reject to make
public their key informants or empirical sources.
Secondly, as
Luke Howie puts it, we are accustomed to watch in TV a lot of
pseudo-experts who talk about terrorism but without any scientific
basis. Their diagnoses not only are based on speculations, but also in
the stereotypes that form radical attitudes against Islam in popular
parlance. Not surprisingly, they are echo of excerpts as “Islam is a
religion of war”, or “terrorism and religion are inextricably
intertwined”. In this vein, Howie (2012) calls the attention to the
needs to investigate how terrorism has affected our daily lives, social
institutions and the quality of democracy instead of igniting hate
against “other ethnicities”.
The allegories of 9/11 has triggered negative effects on western
civilization which affected many of our institutions and habits,
which range from holiday-making, law-interpretation, means of
transport, unionization, and so forth. This is the reason why, a book
dealing in these issues is not only necessary but path-breaking in
these days. First and foremost, my immense gratitude to Nova
Science Publishers to host a book like this, as well as to all
contributors who have played a vital role in configuring a highquality work.
The first chapter authored jointly Geoffrey Skoll explores the
dichotomies of Anglo-Centrism and the sentiment of exemption
within US. While Americans feel special, outstanding and superior
in the sense they have developed one of the most stable democracies
in the world, at time they should abandon the safety of home, this
pride becomes in panic. Over recent years, terrorism woke up
reactions of racism and chauvinism in Europe and US which merit to
be discussed. In the second chapter Ioannis Galatas & Peter Tarlow
address how Islamic State poses tourism industry in a difficult
dilemma. How we may anticipate to the next blow?. Authors
understand that given CBRNE warning we must consider the
possibilities hotels and tourism industry suffer an asymmetrical
attack in the years to come. In third, readers will come across with
the testimony of Christ Bach whose experience describes the feeling
and sentiment of soldiers in Middle East. He told not only how
terrorism but US changed their life and his ways of seeing the world.
In the fourth chapter Korstanje and George in this case in a solely
chapter discuss to what extent terrorism opened the doors for a new
stage of capitalism, where death has played a vital role in mediating
between citizens and their institutions: Thana-capitalism, seems to
be the name of this world where death is commoditized to be gazed
and consumed by a new class, death-seekers. Doubtless, 9/11 was
the founding event that marked the beginning of Thana Capitalism.
Cele Nava, from University of Guanajuato Mexico, sets out an
interesting chapter discussing the philosophical nature of risks and
how the doctrine of precautionary principle determined scientific
research in tourism fields. She meditates on the effects of terrorism
on tourism as well as the complex financial dependency between
center and its periphery. It is interesting not to lose the sight after
9/11 the meaning of risks acquired a more apocalyptic
interpretation. From Italy, philosopher Primavera Fisogni brings
readers an ethical debate respecting to how instrumentalism and
individualism leads ISIS to evilness. Although Islam is not a religion
of war, there is discrepancies in the ways the otherness is
constructed by Islam which may be politically manipulated by some
terrorist groups. This is likely the most pungent and polemic
chapters of the book, which by its high-quality deserves to be
included in our collection.
Seventh Chapter is in charge of Rodanthi Tzanelli, Lecturer at
University of Leeds UK, who suggests that dark tourism, which is a
new emergent segment of visitors of zones whipped by disasters,
terrorist attacks or mass-death, aims to reproduce the stereotypes of
a preceding cultural matrix. In so doing, she reviews dark tourism
not only as a process connection to experiential authenticity (as
literature claim) but as a result of moralized approaches to re-engage
with territory through heritage. Last but not least, Freddy
Timmermann reminds that terrorism hit Latin America long time
before US. Precisely, in the decade of 70s governments of Latin
America experienced a political instability which paved the ways for
the rise of terrorist cells, known as “subversivos-subversives”. This
context of violence enthralled military forces in the government.
Based on the study-case of Pinochet, Timmermann alludes to the
theory of “derivative fear” as it was coined by Bauman to expand the
current understanding how terrorism works. His reflections not only
sheds light on these dark days but also in the current war on terror
in America. While terror is used as an instrument to discipline workforce, democracy sets the pace to dictatorship. The doctrine of
precautionary principle adjoined to fear is vital in this process.
Doubtless, this is the point how has terrorism changed our lives in
present. In the corollary, we discuss critically the book Working
Through Past edited by Caraway, Crook & Crowley which exhibits an
ethnocentric discourse respecting to America as the most
consolidated democracy in the world.
References
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Eid, M. (Ed.). (2014). Exchanging Terrorism Oxygen for Media
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