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Published on: September 28, 2018
The secret society and the social dynamics of terrorist behavior
1Lehrstuhl für Allgemeine Soziologie, Universität Potsdam, Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Fakultät, August-Bebel-Straße 89, D-14482, Potsdam, Deutschland, juergen.mackert@uni-potsdam.de.
Abstract:
The article argues that individualist accounts cannot adequately explain the social dynamics of terrorist behavior as they turn analyses of terrorism into analyses of terrorists. A relational approach that concentrates on the social relations between terrorist organizations and their members would be able to do this, however. Therefore, the article presents a formal analysis that makes the "secret society" of terrorists the lynchpin of an explanation of how terrorist organizations shape the behavioral conditions of volunteers and suicide terrorists in a manner that triggers a type of behavior we might call terrorism.
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