TY - JOUR PY - 2009// TI - The Geopolitics of Terrorism: A Commentary on Flint and Radil's Approach JO - Eurasian geography and economics A1 - Clem, Ralph S. SP - 172 EP - 183 VL - 50 IS - 2 N2 - An American political geographer and prominent specialist in electoral geography presents a measured and informative critique of the preceding paper by Colin Flint and Steven M. Radil (2009) on "Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism: Situating al-Qaeda and the Global War on Terror within Geopolitical Trends and Structures." Among the issues explored are the extent to which the observed patterns of terrorism might differ depending on whether "international" or "domestic" incidents are the focus of attention, and whether fatalities associated with incidents might prove a better metric of terrorism's psychological impact than per capita incident frequency alone. A deeper issue debated in the critique involves the thorny question of whether a singular focus on relative economic deprivation (and on its variations between countries rather than also within countries) offers an adequate explanation for the incidence of terrorism given the complexity of cultural (including ethnicity and religion), social, economic, and political factors that motivate terrorist acts in diverse settings across the world.
LA - SN - 1538-7216 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.2747/1539-7216.50.2.172 ID - ref1 ER -