Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Insecure Hegemony: The Cultural Construction Of 'Righteous Retaliation' In The Hunt For Osama Bin Laden, Marisa Tramontano

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examines the American “authorized discourse” about the hunt for and killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to better understand it as an episode in American cultural hegemony maintenance. Through a structural hermeneutic analysis of presidential speeches and widely-circulated national strategy documents, high distribution news coverage, and entertainment media, alongside one-on-one interviews and focus groups, I illuminate the symbolic mechanics by which the death of Osama bin Laden was constructed as righteous and legitimate retaliatory violence in response to the unprompted, offensive violence of the 9/11 attacks.

Drawing on an array of theoretical approaches including classical sociologists Karl …

Islamic Terrorism In The United States – The Association Of Religious Fundamentalism With Social Isolation & Paths Leading To Extreme Violence Through Processes Of Radicalization., Shay Shiran

Student Theses

This exploratory study focuses on identifying motivations for religious terrorism and Islamic terrorism in the United States in particular. Terrorism is a crime of extreme violence with the end purpose of political influence. This crime is challenging to encounter for its multi-faced characteristics, the unusual motivations of its actors, and their semi-militant conduct. The hypothesis of this study asserts that religious terrorists are radicalized by passing from fundamental to extreme devout agendas, caused by isolation from the dominant society, and resulted in high potential to impose those agendas by extreme violence. Under the theoretical framework of subculture in criminology, this …

Turning To Political Violence: The Emergence Of Terrorism By Marc Sageman (Review), Zachary C. Shirkey

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

An Analysis Of The Efficacy Of Post 9/11 Security Policy In Countering Violent Extremism And Reducing Acts Of International Terrorism, Omaima Khan

Dissertations and Theses

Terrorism is a phenomenon that baffles even the most experienced of researchers within academia. Understanding what constitutes terrorism is important to the field of international relations because combatting terrorist violence yields no straightforward method of prevention and protection. This paper examines four measures of counterterrorism taken by the U.S. government after the September 11^th attacks. The methods included in this study and the framework in which they are congruent with are: The War on Terror as a defense strategy, torture and “enhanced interrogation techniques” as a deterrence method, targeted drone attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan as a compellence force, …