The social problem of terrorism

Following the political examination of terrorism, this chapter suggests that the social problem task is not to expose or define the terrorist of the week – be it the Unabomber or the Islamic State organization (ISIS) threatening national security or the Central Intelligence Agency conducting covert actions – but to examine the political processes and practices that maintain, create, and change the definitions of certain actions as terrorist. Accordingly, we may be better able to understand the status of terrorism as either an act of defiance, deviance, social control, politics, and/or coercion and to understand it as part of a particular time and place.