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The purpose of this paper is to review several major components of hostage negotiation including: the different types of hostage situations; the prediction of the behavioral patterns of the hostage taker; the collection and the use of police intelligence in hostage incidents; and the application of forensic psychology during the hostage negotiations process.

Emphasis on the social psychological aspects of creating attitude change and gaining compliance with the hostage taker are introduced to assist in developing an effective crisis communication approach during the hostage negotiations process.

The paper also discusses trends in hostage negotiation strategies within incidents of domestic violence, suicide by cop, school shootings, and suicide/homicide bombings.

Limitations and advancements in the field of hostage negotiations are also discussed as well as suggestions for the use of tactical entry to resolve unsuccessful hostage negotiations.

Explores the current trend of “suicide by cop,” but also introduces the concept of homicide by cop in relation to police shootings.

The use of criminal psychology in developing hostage negotiation strategies to engage hostage takers with personality disorders, PTSD, paranoid schizophrenia, and suicidal depression is also discussed.

Representations of female perpetrators of political violence contribute to society's thinking about women, gender, violence and agency. Analysis of this discourse is vital to understand its influence on society's knowledge of women and violence. The study investigates how gendered narratives are used to frame female ex-combatants in Nationalist and Unionist newspapers in the post-conflict society of Northern Ireland. The media is a central agent in the construction of knowledge; and this is significant for women who have perpetrated crimes or (political) violence. The existing research found that violent women are narrated and interpreted through gendered discursive frameworks to dismiss or make sense of their violence. However, in the Northern Irish case, although the women are constructed within gendered frames, this does not deny their agency in past political violence.

This paper explores the domain of the symbolic imaginary to comprehend the mechanisms and effects of neoliberal deregulation (anomie) and reckless capital accumulation within and external to the US imperial core with special emphasis on the war on terror, the figure of the suicide bomber, and the internal manifestations of social liquidation in the appearance of the rampage shooter. The concept of the piacular developed by Durkheim is expanded to demonstrate the contrast between the “variable” or human forms of terror with “constant” or mechanized form of the piacular as it appears in the form of the unmanned aerial vehicle or drone. The apparently disconnected image of the drone flying around up there somewhere in the clouds is intimately connected with seemingly unrelated phenomenon of mass murdering martyrs and fanatics down here on the ground. Lastly, the prospects for an anti-drone movement are touched upon and suggested as a fulcrum point from which to “touch” the synthetic point where terror, rampage, and revenge unify.

Unique to this paper is the development of a dialectical, formal, conceptual “geometry” rooted in Durkheim’s classic analysis of suicide for disclosing the hidden analogs obtaining in the relationship between suicide bombings and rampage shootings and their conceptual fusion in the form of the unmanned aerial vehicle or drone.

Capitalism linked to global defense and security operations produces its own terrifying nemeses as both causes and effects. Rather than something that has to be defeated, terror is an enemy that cannot be defeated but neither can it prevail against an empire. Likewise, the rampage shooter is not merely an individual in need of psychiatric care but a product of domestic policies that sacrifice everything for security and war. These two figures are “mirror opposites” or speculative doubles of one another, which when we attempt to comprehend the image of the seemingly unrelated drone machine what were find is the unexpected synthesis of the twin logics of terror and rampage at work in the sky.

If people hope to live in a society ruled democratically rather than imperial subjects they must know where to apply moral and political leverage. Suicidal bombers and lone shooters are definite problems, but focusing on the defects of individuals diverts the critical gaze from the larger problem of foreign policy, domestic austerity, and, perhaps, the war on the drone represents a unique opening within the aggregate system to push back against the abstract, imperial system of global and domestic hegemony.

This paper represents a new and unique synthesis of Durkheimian and interpretive sociologies with various strands of critical social theory providing new optics for the analysis of international terrorism, domestic mass murders, and the use of unmanned aerial vehicles in the wars on terror.

In this chapter, I apply theories of conflict and social control derived from the work of Donald Black to explain when suicide attacks will occur and who will carry them out.

Drawing on the published literature on suicide, suicide terrorism, and social control, I present a structural analysis of suicide attacks that specifies which configurations of social space and social time are most likely to produce them.

I propose that suicide attacks can be explained by structural patterns such as social distance, status inferiority, organization, and large movements of social time. Furthermore, sacrifice is greater among those who are socially marginal individuals whose locations are otherwise conducive to both partisanship and self-destruction.

I highlight structural similarities between suicide attacks and other forms of violence, social control, and suicide, thus contributing to the systemization of structural theories of human behavior and suggesting avenues for further study.

Analysts of armed conflict and war have noted a considerable shift in the way wars are conducted in the present. These analyses share the observations that present-day warfare includes more and more non-state actors as warring parties. Terrorist groups are also part of the (post-)modern picture of violent conflict. Within the past decade, they have increasingly relied on the instrument of suicide terrorism. Suicide attacks are an irritating phenomenon as they seem inherently irrational. The paper examines the spread of the suicide attacks in different parts of the world and identifies cross-case structures, contexts, and mechanisms that propel the use of suicide bombers.

Following the disasters of 9/11/01 the U.S. government has embarked on what is intended to be a comprehensive response to the hazard of further terrorist attacks on Americans at home and abroad. This paper addresses the homeland component of the response and asserts that both the general approach and the measures being deployed are neither comprehensive nor well-balanced. The broad goal of security is losing ground to the narrower objective of defense; mitigation strategies are being overshadowed by preparedness and response alternatives; expert systems are preferred over grass-roots bottom-up ones; and possibilities for reducing human vulnerability are being ignored in favor of programs that aim to reduce risks or lessen the vulnerability of built structures and infrastructures. Preferences for the use of sophisticated technologies that are intended to quarantine terrorism and minimize its consequences far outnumber efforts to engage with the messier realm of ideas and behaviors related to terrorism. Yet it is the latter that shape the public interpretation of terrorism risks, structure patterns of exposure and affect the coping capabilities of threatened communities. Without substantial changes to policy that take account of these deficiencies, Americans are likely to find themselves little better prepared to confront the challenges of future terrorist attacks on targets in U.S. territory and the nation’s ability to address other kinds of hazards may be seriously compromised.

The aim of the chapter is to outline a framework for a cultural analysis of terrorism. It is based on an analogy between the logic that characterizes terrorism and the logic that characterizes the “worlds” of artistic and cultural production.

This chapter critically examines some explanations of the logic of terrorism which respectively assign a central role to individual psychology, the rational choice of the group and values. It is therefore based on secondary sources.

The chapter argues that the logic of terrorism can be fully understood only as a result of the “cultural” construction of collective and individual identities.

The chapter provides a framework for a cultural analysis of terrorism.

The chapter borrows the concept of a “political world” and makes of it a central tool to explain the set of symbolic products that characterizes terrorism.

The phenomenon of “women in combat” is not such a novel one; it however has shattered the dominant perception of women as peaceful and nonviolent people. Indeed, it resulted in critical questions being raised as to why women are involved in patterns of extreme violent behavior, such as suicide bombers. In the wake of insurgent activities by an Islamist group in Nigeria (Boko Haram (BH)) in recent times, the feminization of terror that has come to characterise the activities of this group has generated much concern. Although there may not be easy answers as to why women are involved in terrorism in Nigeria, the threat that such a scenario poses to security is real, deserving a credible and scientific explanation. To investigate this phenomenon, data was gathered by the survey method, which conforms more to a qualitative research design. The data sources were determined through purposeful sampling technique and instruments such as interviews, focused group discussions (FGDs), and non-participant personal observation. Applying the feminist theory of international relations (IR) as the tool for analysis, the author seeks to unravel the hidden propositions about gender. Among the findings was evidence that the shift by BH to include women in its operations was in response to increased pressure on its male operatives. Since deception is key to the tactics employed by BH, the eradication of terror in Nigeria could be brought about by the identification and prevention of possible deceptive moves by the insurgents.

Purpose: The majority of academic and policy studies on counterterrorism rely on what is termed “the terror stock model.” According to this model, terrorist activity can be viewed as a product of a stock of terror: a combination of human, physical, and monetary resources needed to launch terrorist attacks. Consequently, countering terrorism is a matter of reducing the capacity of terrorist organizations to operate via direct assaults on terrorists themselves. Defining terrorism as a form of collective action, this article examines how various Israeli initiatives influence Palestinian acts of terrorism.

Method: This paper investigates how the rate of suicide terror attempts is affected by violent, non-violent, and socioeconomic forms of initiatives by the Israeli government between 2000 and 2006 using a series of event-history analyses. While directly addressing the efficacy of what the Israeli government terms as its methods of counterterrorism – violent repression of insurgents and terror suspects – it also explores the applicability of various social movement theories to exact a more accurate awareness of what activities actually incite or inhibit terrorism.

Findings: The results indicate that while certain forms of repression that the Israeli government identifies as counter-terrorist measures (such as killing of insurgents and detentions) have the intended outcome – a lower rate of suicide bombings – other forms and measures of repression have mixed effects. The results suggest that suicide bombings can be explained at least partly by a mixture of increased hostility, limited capacity to mobilize, and socioeconomic distress.