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Terrorism: Shifting Paradigms (SOCI20007)
Undergraduate level 2Points: 12.5On Campus (Parkville)
Overview
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This subject examines the various dimensions of terrorism and its manifestations. This includes the nation state's capacity to authorise and to create the conditions for the practices known as terrorism. In this subject we interrogate the role of the nation state and the rhetoric/s of anti-terrorism that both produce and contain acts known as terrorism. We look at the psychology of both the nation state and the terrorist through different anaytical approaches. To this end we examine the function of different terrorist acts - including suicide bombing in Iraq, Israel/Palestine, London and New York, assassinations and bombings in Northern Ireland and England, and practices of state terror in the context of acts of genocide, disappearance and torture. All of these examinations are used to assist in trying to think about a new way of conceptualizing violence performed by the state, the individual and the group.
Intended learning outcomes
On completion of this subject students should:
- Be able to identify and analyse social, political and psychological processes involved in the rise, transformation and decomposition of different terrorist movements;
- Be able to analyse the relationship between types of terrorism and wider patterns of social, cultural and political change, in particular contemporary globalisation;
- Be able to use psychoanalytic, political and socio-legal frameworks to analyse responses to terrorism;
- Demonstrate an ability to use political theory to critically explore primary source material developed by terrorist groups and/or the nation state;
- Be able to use political or psychoanalytic theory to explore the relationship between objective and subjective dimensions of contemporary forms of terrorism.
Last updated: 20 November 2024