Delineated Self-Terrorism Definition

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Arena and Arrigo (2006) acknowledge that the self becomes internalised when behaviour is learnt from other individuals and/or emanated from the structural components of the environment they are in. Furthermore, they observe that the self becomes reflective upon symbolic interactions and symbols with other human beings. Behaviour then becomes a form of role talking insofar that what is expected of one another is acted out between two parties (Mead, 1967). In terms of terrorism this denotes that the social constructionism of social movements is delineated from assumptions, stereo-profiling and state shared information (Ramsey, 2015; Stryker, 1981). These discourses resonate with the idea of the self being labelled and the self, becoming …show more content…

From the literatures explored in this paper it is suffice to argue that terrorism is however multifaceted. It is not adequate to simply denote one linear delineation of terrorism despite Ramsey’s (2015) positing that such is possible. As demonstrated the macro and micro elements of terrorism is founded upon the individual self and how the individual self pertains to the wider social movement of terrorist organisations (Arena and Arrigo, 2006; Lindsey and Williams, 2013). It is argued that social movements are born from oppression of a group of individuals who share the same consensus (Lindsey and Williams, 2013). However, to this rebuttal Arena and Arrigo (2006) build on previous works of the self (cf. Mead, 1967; Stryker, 1981) which ascertain the theory of socialisation and learnt behaviour of the self is socially constructed from an individual’s social environment. This notion however is vapid insofar that it is problematic to suggest society constructs the self and the self-constructs society as the two cannot arguably co-exist. One must preside over the other. Therefore, it could be posited that the role of identity in terrorism is merely conceptual as a way for the state to legitimise their actions against social movements and in turn creates the role of terrorist through identity

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